# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 

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^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 

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LIVING WORDS 



OR, 



UNWRITTEN SERMONS 



Of THE LATE 



JOHN M'CLINTOCK, D.D., LL.D. 



REPORTED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY. 



WITH A PREFACE BY BISHOP JANES. 



SECOND EDITION. 



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New Vorjc: 

CARLTON & LAN A HAN. 

SAN" FRANCISCO: E. THOMAS. 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 

1871. 



3/2333 



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If 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

CARLTON & LANAHAN, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



PREFACE. 



The author of these discourses, Rev. John M'Clin- 
tock, D.D., was an eminent minister of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. He was very rich in natural endow- 
ments. His beneficent Creator gave to him a capa- 
cious, symmetrical, and active mind, a gentle and 
philanthropic spirit, a social and sympathetic nature. 
These qualified him eminently for friendship. They 
made him loving and lovely. 

Earnest in his general life, John M'Clintock was 
especially so in reference to its supreme pursuit — 
the proclaiming of "the kingdom of God, and his 
righteousness." Converted in his youth, immediately 
thereafter impressed by the Holy Ghost that he 
was chosen of Jesus to be one of his embassadors, 
coveting earnestly the best gifts, and seeking dil- 
igently, by searching the Scriptures, meditation, 
prayer, and the use of the means of grace, to be- 
come a workman that needed not to be ashamed, he 
obtained a profound knowledge of the things of God 
and a deep experience of his saving mercy. By grace 
he rose up into the fellowship of the spiritual, the 
Divine, the Infinite. He walked with God. 

In his early youth he had a thirst for knowledge. 



4 Preface. 

His conversion to God only intensified this desire. 
He was the more earnest in the cultivation of his 
mental powers because he had a higher service to 
which to devote them. He therefore, through great 
embarrassments, courageously, energetically, and per- 
sistently sought a thorough collegiate education until 
he attained it. His student-life lasted until his death. 
He consequently became a man of varied, accurate, 
and profound scholarship. In the knowledge of the 
Holy Scriptures, of experimental and practical the- 
ology, of Christian ethics and Church history, he was 
excelled by but few. 

Dr. M'Clintock's studious and devoted life did not 
lead him into seclusion. He mingled with society, 
traveled and resided in foreign lands. With all these 
advantages he studied human nature most carefully 
and philosophically. He understood well the char- 
acter and condition of our race. He knew what is 
in man : his religious instincts, the longings of his 
heart after God and spiritual and eternal verities : 
how these aspirations are depressed by the flesh, by 
the world, and by the powers of darkness : how hope 
and fear alternate in the heart : how light and shade 
pass over the mind : how men struggle to be good, and 
are borne away by their passions : how they reach 
out after something pure, and noble, and saving, and 
satisfying, but do not lay hold of it. He felt how 
much they need a pastor's sympathy and assistance. 
By his personal experience, and the study of the 
Holy Scriptures, and his converse with the disciples 
of Christ, he was well versed in the warfare of be- 



Preface. 5 

lievers. He understood how their natural weakness 
lessened their spiritual strength ; how the world 
tempts them and Satan assaults them ; how keen are 
their conflicts, and how sore are their trials ; how 
they oftentimes yearn for sympathy and need a word 
of cheer. 

We have drawn this brief and imperfect sketch of 
the author of these sermons that the reader may 
see how well he was qualified by natural endowments, 
by religious experience, by literary attainments, by 
theological knowledge, by his understanding of human 
nature, and his acquaintance with religious warfare, 
to preach Christ, to rightly divide the word of truth, 
'' to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased 
with his own blood " — to be a Christian Pastor. 

These sermons were preached by Dr. M'Clintock 
when he was Pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, New York, in his ordinary Sabbath 
ministrations. They were delivered extemporane- 
ously and reported by a stenographer. The re- 
ports were preserved by Dr. M'Clintock, but were 
not revised by him. They are very well reported. 
Still they are not exact reproductions of the ser- 
mons throughout. Stenography is a great and useful 
art, and has reached a good degree of perfection, but 
is not yet capable of giving to us the original dis- 
course or an exact copy. Photography is a wonder- 
ful art, and produces wonderful likenesses, but it 
cannot duplicate our persons. We are greatly in- 
debted to the artist for these photographs of Dr. 
M'Clintock's sermons. In them we see him as an 



6 Preface. 

embassador of Christ, praying men to be reconciled 
to God. We see him watching for souls as one that 
must give account ; with all plainness instructing, 
reproving, and exhorting believers, and urging them 
to go on to perfection. We see him as a wise master- 
builder polishing the lively stones, and working them 
into right positions in the spiritual temple. 

The sermons are eminently practical, yet they 
treat of the cardinal doctrines of the Gospel, and of 
some of the sublimest truths of Christianity. But 
as the author had both learning and good sense, the 
style is so clear and simple that the common mind 
will be edified by their perusal. Indeed, the book 
would be invaluable in our Sunday-school libraries. 
It is a rich addition to the evangelical literature 
of the Church. Its circulation will not be limited 
to the denomination of which he was so beloved a 
minister, but the volume will be sought and read by 
the spiritually-minded and liberal-hearted of other 
Churches. So he, being dead, will continue to speak 
to living multitudes. E. S. Janes. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

X. The Visit of the M agians 9 

II. The Song of the Angels 30 

III. The Mile-stones of Life 45 

IV. The Way to Forgiveness 66 

V. The Christian Life a Growth 83 

VI. The Open Door — At Home 103 

VII. The Open Door — Abroad 120 

VIII. The Gospel Enough 139 

IX. The Pastor's Joy 153 

X. Church Fellowship 171 

XL The Import of the Supper 188 

XII. The Morning-Star 205 

XIII. The Cross a Burden 222 

XIV. The Perils of Ignorance 236 

XV. The Pleasure that Destroys 25 1 

XVI. The Sin of Sins 268 

XVII. The Wisdom of Childhood 284 

XVIII. The Choir of Virtues 299 

XIX. Love Unutterable 317 



SERMONS 



THE VISIT OF THE MAGIANS. 

We have seen His Star in the East, and are come to worship Him. 
Matthew u, 2. 



The season of Advent, the time just before and just 
after Christmas, including Christmas itself, is ob- 
served throughout almost all parts of the Christian 
Church. In the farthest East, the earlier home of 
Christianity, you will find it observed ; in the Roman 
Church, throughout all its vast dominions, you will 
find it observed ; and in the Protestant Churches 
generally, except in those which, by perhaps a natural 
reaction, not so much from Romanism as from Ro- 
manizing Protestantism in England, in the time of 
Archbishop Laud and of Charles II., were driven 
into the other extreme of Puritanism. But even 
among these the Church is coming back again to the 
observance of those times observed of old, which 
are founded in the Scripture. 

The Methodist Church has always, when she has 
come up to the usage of her founders, observed 



10 Living Words. 



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the blessed Christmas time. Luther made this dis- 
tinction between the festivals established by the 
Church of Rome in honor of men, and those which 
had their roots in the Gospel narrative itself; that 
the one should go away with Rome and Popery, and 
the other — those which had their roots in the Gospel — 
should and ought to be retained in the Church. See 
how it works. In this season of Christmas and Ad- 
vent, in the Churches which observe it, the minds 
of children, and even of the middle aged and the 
old, are turned of necessity to think upon the birth 
of Christ, and the circumstances which preceded, 
accompanied, and followed it. Gifts are given, and 
observances made of various kinds, all tending to 
bring up these things in the mind and inspire the 
imagination, especially of children, if we always, as 
we should do, teach children the use of these things : 
that we give our gifts on Christmas-day because on 
Christmas-day God gave his greatest gift to the 
world, and that, by a very beautiful association 
throughout Christendom, the day is appropriated for 
kindly gifts from a father to his children, from 
brother to sister, from friend to friend ; and every 
gift given in. a Christian way, and with a true Chris- 
tian remembrance, brings the mind to think of that 
great gift which embraces all others, for if he freely 
gave us his only Son, " how shall he not with him 
also freely give us all things." 



The Visit of the Magians. 1 1 

The text which I have chosen is one of the most 
beautiful which refer to this Advent season. It is 
the festival of the incarnation, of God manifest in the 
flesh. Our text speaks of the visit of the Magians, the 
wise men from the East, and their declaration when 
they arrived at Jerusalem, " We have seen his star 
in the East, and are come to worship him." This 
text is appropriated, by those Churches which carry 
festivals further than we are inclined to do, to the 
Feast of the Epiphany. In the earlier ages the 
Epiphany was observed at Christmas by the West- 
ern Church, and in the Eastern Church on the 6th 
of January, and both united in fixing the latter 
date for the Feast of the Epiphany — the manifesta- 
tion of God through Christ to the Gentiles. The 
text is beautifully appropriate to the time of Christ- 
mas. This star, which appeared to the wise men in 
the East, appeared to them at the time of the birth 
of the Lord Jesus ; and we cannot more appropriately 
remember the birth of Christ, nor can we get from 
the history of that birth its full lessons more beauti- 
fully, than we can in connection with this visit of the 
wise men from the East. 

The narrative itself is an exquisitely beautiful one. 
It is one which seizes upon the heart of the world 
by a natural sympathy ; and you cannot speak of 
any thing that will attract little children's minds, 
or inflame youthful imaginations more quickly, in 



12 Living Words. 

all the Gospel story, than to tell them of the star m 
the East. And so throughout all Christian poetry, 
this theme has been taken up in song by some of the 
most quick and vivid imaginations in the Church. 
And in the realms of profane poetry, in art, in 
legends, in sculpture and painting, for age after age, 
the visit of the wise men has been one of those 
themes of which the world never tires, and never will. 
All the elements of beauty are contained in this 
simple narrative. Let us contemplate it this morn- 
ing, and not alone that our eyes may be charmed by 
its beauty — that we may gather up what poetry has 
clustered about it — but that we may get at its deep 
and spiritual significance. 

Let us first see what is meant, and then gather 
from that meaning what lessons we can of practical 
duty and privilege for ourselves. And these are the 
points of the sermon. 

What did this visit of the wise men mean ? 
What does it signify especially in the scheme of 
salvation ? Its great significance is — what the 
Church makes it to be in the festival of the 
Epiphany — the revelation of God to the Gentiles. 
Look at the persons to whom this manifestation was 
made. Who were they ? Wise men from the East. 
They were not Jews, remember that ; they were not 
Jews, but Gentiles. The word here translated wise 
men, is the same as that in other places translated 



The Visit of the Magians, 13 

magician ; so that the word has two meanings, a good 
one and a bad one. The magicians formed a sacred 
caste, or college, under the Medo-Persian Kings and 
under the Chaldeans. Their position was a high 
one ; they were the teachers and priests of the people, 
and the leading philosophers for many ages. It was 
considered a necessary part of a princely education 
among the Median Kings, and afterward among the 
Medo-Persians, that the young prince should be in- 
structed in the peculiar wisdom of the Magians, and 
none but the scions of royal houses were permitted 
to know all the mysterious learning they had ac- 
quired. This learning embraced every thing in the 
higher culture of those ages, and was known in its 
development as the law or laws of the Medes and 
Persians, which changed not. The laws of these 
Eastern nations were the fruit and outgrowth, and at 
the same time the criterion, of the culture and civil- 
ization of the people, and its very highest culture 
and highest civilization. Daniel did not hesitate to 
become the chief of the Magians when, at the court 
of Nebuchadnezzar, who had called him to the head 
of their college, he undertook the office and filled it 
nobly. In later ages the influence of these people 
declined ; but still, at the coming of Christ, I think 
there can be no question that these oriental philoso- 
phers represented the very highest culture of the 
land in which they lived. Their studies included 



14 ' Living Words. 

astronomy, connecting with it astrology ; for then 
men almost invariably believed that the stars had a 
specific influence on the course of human life, and 
were indices and exponents of human life, and might 
be used to prognosticate the future. The stars were 
believed to foretell or accompany great political 
changes, the rise and fall of empires, and the birth 
of great princes who should be of vast importance in 
the history of civilization. These were the men of 
whom our text speaks in the simple words, " There 
came wise men from the East unto Jerusalem." 

I have told you that the substance of this text 
is the revelation of God to the Gentiles. These 
men came as embassadors from the heathen world. 
They brought with them not only myrrh and 
frankincense and gold, but the long-treasured an- 
ticipations of ages, the unconscious yearning of the 
Gentile nations, going on from year to year, and 
century after century, first under the impulse of the 
earlier prophecies recorded in the Bible, and then 
under the combined influence of all science and 
learning and art — all bringing up men to the great 
consciousness that there must and should be some 
day a great Deliverer to raise up the human race 
from the depth of its degradation. They came, 
the embodiment of heathendom, to see the new light 
that was to dawn upon the nations in the day of 
their deepest darkness ; since for them this star, that 



The Visit of the Magians. 15 

they saw in the far East, as they were watching the 
courses of the planets in the study of astronomy, this 
star was the voice of God as spoken by his prophet, 
" Arise, shine ; for thy light is come ; and the glory 
of the Lord is risen upon thee." And so, brethren, 
these men came the representatives and embassadors 
of all heathendom, and came at the bidding of God. 
They did not come as volunteers, as philosophers 
to search out a mystery, or add to the stores of 
their learning. No ; they came because they saw 
the star — they came because they were drawn by the 
grace of God. O how beautifully, here in the very 
opening of the history, before any of those who sur- 
rounded the cradle of the infant, no matter what 
thoughts they had of his Messiahship, had dreamed 
at all of the unfolding of the vast purpose of God for 
the conversion of the Gentiles and the bringing in 
of the "isles of the sea," — how beautifully is here 
illustrated that infinite grace which was to reach all 
mankind ! ■ 

The sign itself, and its peculiar fitness, deserve a 
moment's consideration. You remember I said they 
were astronomers watching the stars. Here is a 
beautiful passage in Donne (who, in the midst of so 
much quaintness, has so much expressive fullness) 
bearing upon this point : " God speaks in such forms 
and phrases as may best work upon those to whom 
he speaks. David, who was a shepherd before, 



1 6 Living Words. 

God took to feed his people. To the Magians, 
given to study the stars, God gave a star to be 
their guide to Christ at Bethlehem. To those who 
followed him to Capernaum for meat, Christ speaks 
of spiritual ' food,' To the Samaritan woman at the 
well, he preached of the ' water of salvation.' Christ 
makes heaven all things to all men that he may gain 
all." 

The fitness of this star as a representation is still 
more apparent when we come to consider prophecy, 
and history corresponding to prophecy — "I am the 
bright and morning star "—and the prophecies of the 
Old Testament which had their fulfillment in him, and 
that wonderful prophecy, which came out of that dumb 
prophet Balaam, who had so little apprehension of 
the great part he had to play in the development of 
God's Church : " I shall see him, but not now : I 
shall behold him, but not nigh : there shall come a 
Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Is- 
rael." This idea runs throughout the whole current 
of prophecy. Let us listen to it in that grand six- 
tieth chapter of Isaiah : " For, behold, the darkness 
shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people : 
but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory 
shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come 
to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising : 
all they from Sheba shall come : they shall bring gold 
and incense ; and they shall show forth the praises of 



The Visit of the Magians. iy 

the Lord." And again in the forty-fifth chapter : 
" The labor of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia 
and of the Sabeans, shall come over unto thee, and 
they shall be thine : they shall come after thee ; they 
shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely 
God is in thee ; and there is none else, there is no 
God." And again in the Psalms : " They that dwell 
in the wilderness shall bow before him ; and his ene- 
mies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and 
of the isles shall bring presents : the kings of Sheba 
and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall 
down before him : all nations shall serve him." 

And so the current of these prophecies mingled 
with the current thought, not merely of the Jews, 
but of all nations. These wise men of the East had 
doubtless been imbued with the spirit of these pre- 
dictions, and they carried along with them, age after 
age, these promises that there should come a king, to 
whom all other kings should bow ; that there should 
come a wise man, before whom Solomon's wisdom 
should " pale its ineffectual fires ; " a Redeemer, who 
should bring not merely the chosen people, but the 
ends of the earth, to fear him. 

And so they came ; but their visit was not appre- 
ciated or understood by those who surrounded the 
cradle of the infant Jesus, who received this visit as 
in the natural order of things, and by no means ap- 
preciated its force and meaning. Even the disciples 



1 8 Living Words. 

had to be taught afterward by very hard lessons that 
the Gentiles were to come in ; that the scepter had 
departed from Judah, and the Jews were no longer 
God's elect ; that the elect had become reprobate, and 
the reprobate elect ; that the Gentiles were to be 
grafted on the living vine. As Paul writes, in the 
second chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians : 
" Among whom also we all had our conversation in 
times past ; and were by nature the children of 
wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in 
mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, hath 
raised us up together, and made us sit together in 
heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now therefore ye 
are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
citizens with the saints, and of the household of 
God." The breadth and length, then, of this visit 
of the Magians we find was, that it was the type of 
the great glory of Christendom that Christianity was 
to be for all the nations, with no limit of place or 
of race ; that the religion founded by this infant 
lying in the cradle was to be the religion of all classes 
of men in all times until time should be no more. 

When on their journey they, at each sunset, saw 
the star in the East they followed it nightly, watch- 
ing where it would lead them, and it led them on and 
on, perhaps for two or three months, until they reached 
Jerusalem. They expected that it would lead them 
to Jerusalem, because they had heard that out of 



The Visit of the Magians. 19 

Judea the King of the world should come, and was to 
be a King of the Jews. What did they naturally 
do ? As soon as they came to Jerusalem they went 
to the royal palace, supposing this new monarch 
was to be born there. You have heard how Herod 
was troubled and disturbed when they came there, 
though they came not to trouble or disturb him, 
but to ask for this new prince in the most natural 
way, and in the most natural place — in the pal- 
ace of the King, on Mount Zion, surrounded by the 
mountains. But how was it ? Not there was Christ 
born. No, no ; for Jerusalem there was to be no such 
glory as that the Saviour should be born there, but 
only the shame of being the place where he should die. 
Jerusalem, which had covered herself with so many 
idolatries, and was at last to cover* herself with so 
vast a crime, was not to be honored with being the 
birthplace of the Saviour. So they followed the star 
again, and found that it led them to Bethlehem, a 
little village not known in history, but mentioned in 
prophecy. " And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of 
Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah : 
for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall 
rule my people Israel." And again : " The sceptre 
shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from 
between his feet, until Shiloh come." And now the 
glory of Jerusalem was ended forever. There was 
no hope of a king, in the sense of the Jewish idea 



20 Living Words. 

of a king, ever again to live in Jerusalem. The 
palace stood, to be sure ; but palace and temple alike 
were soon to be whelmed in ruin, which should 
know no resurrection. The glory had departed, and 
departed evermore. And so the wise men went not 
to Jerusalem, but to Bethlehem, and came there, 
bringing their gifts of gold, and frankincense, and 
myrrh. 

In this narrative we find the manifestation of 
God to the Gentiles most beautifully typified. Now 
let us gather the fitting lessons from this great 
truth. The first is, that as at that time the high- 
est culture and highest learning were brought by 
the Magians humbly to the cradle where the Lord 
Jesus lay, so in all times of the Church, and more 
and more as the Church advances to her univer- 
sal dominion, will all science and learning remain 
tributary to the progress of the kingdom of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. We are told that kings used to come, 
and queens, from north and south, and east and west, to 
listen to the wisdom of Solomon. In that cradle, in 
the humble home at Bethlehem of Judea, there lay a 
wiser than Solomon, and, under the guidance of the 
star, the wise men from the East recognized their 
Master. Could it be without an idea of this typical 
meaning that these wise men were brought to humble 
themselves there ? You will find, throughout all the 
history of the Lord Jesus, some element to indicate his 



The Visit of the magians. 2 r 

glory in every act of his humiliation. So in this birth 
of his in the stable at Bethlehem, amid the humble 
surroundings that showed his humiliation, here was 
this gleam to show that all science and art, all learning, 
all taste and culture and wealth, were to be made sub- 
missive to that infant child. The wise men came, the 
type of all wise men : they brought their gifts, the 
type of all the world's riches ; their frankincense, the 
highest offering that could be made before the tem- 
ple of any god ; the myrrh, which embalms and pre- 
serves the remains of those we cherish ; the gold, 
the embodiment of all value, the highest representa- 
tion of value then as it is now, and as it always will 
be. They brought all these and offered them before 
the cradle of the infant Jesus. Do we not find here 
the lesson for the Church, that all learning and cul- 
ture and art, all growth in civilization and advance- 
ment in taste, should be made tributary to the Gospel 
of the Lord Jesus ? that they have no beauty other- 
wise ? And again we find, conversely, that all art and 
civilization and advancement in modern ages has been 
due to this very Christianity of which this cradle in 
Bethlehem was the beginning. All that distinguishes 
us from the heathen and uncivilized nations has its 
roots in Christianity. If our laws are better than 
those of the Hindoos, it is because we have the laws 
of Moses ancf the life of Christ ; if our art is purer 
than the art of the Chinese, it is because the roots 



22 Living Words. 

of this purity are to be found in the histories of this 
Gospel, just such histories as the visit of the Ma- 
gians ; if the painters of modern Christendom, of 
a century or two ago, excelled the painters of past 
periods and ancient glory, it was because the Chris- 
tian idea permeated art at that time more than at 
any time before or since ; and, just in proportion as 
the Christian idea itself permeates the art and learn- 
ing of an age, will the art and learning of that age be 
a permanent and abiding culture. I am not speak- 
ing in riddles, or making mere assertions. The 
more you study art and learning, the more you will 
find that the Christian idea is the centre of them 
all, and as the Christian idea fades away these will 
fade. Painters do not paint now as painters did a 
century or two ago, and architects do not build as 
architects built centuries ago ; and there are no 
structures of modern date equal to those grand edi- 
fices which grew up three, or four, or five hundred years 
ago under the hands of men whose names are now 
for the most part buried in oblivion, edifices of im- 
perial magnificence, and wondrous and almost celes- 
tial beauty. And why ? Because painters did not 
sav, " How shall I make money by this art of mine ?" 
Architects did not ask, " How shall I get fame by 
this art of mine ? " Even though they did aspire to 
fame, their names are forgotten ; but you will find, if 
you go into the deep cellars of some of these vast 



The Visit of the Magians. 23 

and mighty structures, in the corner a foundation- 
stone, and on it perhaps the architect's name, and 
perhaps not ; but you will find carved on it a Latin 
sentence, which says, " This building is for the 
greater glory of God." And just in proportion as 
that idea filled the mind of the artist as, in his mid- 
night musings, he endeavored to bring out from his 
rich imagination and clear thought a structure that 
should last forever, just as his mind was exalted and 
his taste purified by this grand conception, do we find 
his conception itself to be elevated, and the execu- 
tion of it to be a thing of beauty— beauty to last for 
evermore. 

Let us learn on this Christmas-day to take all our 
learning, art, and cultivation, as God gives us oppor- 
tunities to get it, and bring it all to the foot of the 
cross of the Lord Jesus our blessed Redeemer. 
And then, when any man comes to you with any 
proposition which shall divorce Christianity from art 
or from learning, a proposition for a school that shall 
be without a Bible, a college without a prayer, a uni- 
versity which shall separate secular studies from sa- 
cred, and in which men shall be taught the learning 
of the Greeks and Romans, but not the word of God, 
tell him the wise men came from the East to Jeru- 
salem with their gold and frankincense and myrrh, 
and laid all before the cradle of the infant Jesus. 
O how grandly does our duty as Christian men come 



24 Living Words. 



& 



up before us in the presence of such thoughts as 
these ! that to us is given the culture of the na- 
tion, and intrusted the education of the future by 
the hand of God : to say what this great America 
shall be. What it shall be, depends upon the 
Churches of the time ; what it shall be, depends upon 
the schools ; what it shall be, depends upon the col- 
leges and universities of the time ; what it shall be, 
depends upon the newspapers ; and what these shall 
be, that is for you to say. God help you to say it 
with a just sense of your responsibilities ! God help 
you to do as these wise men did when they came 
from the East ! humbly, and with what frankincense 
you have, with what myrrh you may possess, with 
what gold he has given, with what lustre of intellect 
you may be endowed, to come with it all to the cradle 
of the child Jesus, and say, " Here, Lord, they are 
thine ; take them to advance thy Church and glorify 
thy name,' 1 

Observe that the shepherds, who were Jews, re- 
ceived a revelation of a quite different kind from this 
revelation which the Magians received, who were 
Gentiles and philosophers.. The shepherds were 
watching their flocks at night, and they had been 
accustomed for thousands of years to revelations by 
prophets, by angelic ministries, by dreams and vis- 
ions ; so when the news was to come to the shepherds 
as the type of the Jewish people — for we have both 



The Visit of the Magians. 2$ 

Jews and Gentiles typified in those immortal groups 
that shall never die out of the memories of men — the 
shepherds saw an angel, and heard the voices of an- 
gelic company singing " Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace, good-will toward men." If they 
had seen a star it would not have attracted their at- 
tention. Stars had come and gone often and often, 
and they had not noticed it ; and so, on the other 
hand, angels would have been nothing to the Ma- 
gians. There would have been no fitness or apt- 
ness in such a vision to them. The simple, un- 
sophisticated Jewish mind was attracted by the 
angelic vision. On the other hand the Magians, in- 
tellectual, cool, crafty, perhaps accustomed to deceive 
others, the representatives of the philosophy and 
skepticism, but at all events the philosophy of the 
time, were attracted by a natural object — a new star. 
When the Magians saw it they recognized it at once, 
for they knew every star in the heavens. 

Do we not find here typified the union of science 
and religion in the Magian's vision of nature ? In 
the Christian Church the union, the mystic marriage, 
of science and religion is brought to its perfection, 
and what God has put together let no man put asun- 
der ! It is the saddest sign of the time to see the 
effort made by some men who are cultivated and 
scientific to leave God and religion out of the case 
entirely ; and it is one of the best symptoms, that 



26 Living Words. 

the best educated and most scientific men are relig- 
ious and godly men ; that the highest intellects have 
been simple, child-like, Christian intellects. The 
great discoveries in science have been made by men 
who believed in God and trusted in Christ. New- 
ton, the greatest and most magnificent intellect that 
has yet appeared, came, like these wise men of the 
East, child-like and humbly to the foot of the cross 
of the Lord Jesus, with all the vast treasures of his 
noble thought, deeming himself to be but an infant 
in the presence of the Saviour. 

Finally, the lessons which we get from this beauti- 
ful narrative are these : first, promptitude to obey the 
voice of God. How was it with these wise men ? 
Three words are put into Caesars mouth, and made 
the types of imperial mind and achievement from 
that day to this : " I came, I saw, I conquered." 
There is something imperial in the very words of 
this text : " We have seen, we came ;" " we have 
seen his star, we have come to worship him." The 
two things together, nothing between them ; no long- 
drawn argumentation, no hesitation or uncertainty, 
or waiting for other warnings ; no asking of spirits from 
the deep, no summoning of the dead to rise ; nothing 
of all this. " We have seen his star, and are here." 
So let it be with us. How often have we seen the 
star, heard the voice of God, and have waited and 
sought a brighter light. If these Magians^ could 



The Visit of the Magians. 27 

come from afar simply at the sight of that silent star, 
how should it be with us, who have the Sun of right- 
eousness shining brilliantly upon our path of life, and 
not merely silent stars and suns, but the myriad 
voices of nature and the Gospel ? 

We also learn from this narrative the lesson of 
perseverance in obedience. They saw the star in the 
East hundreds of miles away ; they traveled night 
after night, and watched when it disappeared in the 
day, until they came to the place. The day-eclipse 
did not hinder them. Uncertainties they may have 
had, and they may have met with attempts on the 
part of those who met them to turn them back, as 
deluded in the search, but these did not hinder 
them ; they went on and on, until at last the star 
stood ovef Bethlehem. Particularly to the young 
this point applies : " We have seen his star in the 
East." In the beginning of your days you have seen 
the star of Bethlehem, and are willing to follow its 
light. What I am saying has been the history of 
many ; by and by the glare of earthly day may be 
too strong for the light of this star. What shall 
you do then ? In childhood and youth it shines 
beautifully. 

" Star of the East, how sweet art thou 

Seen in life's early morning sky, 
Ere yet a cloud has dimmed the brow, 

While yet we gaze with childhood's eye." 



28 Living Words. 

Some have followed it through all of life. To some, 
whose heads are gray, and limbs tottering, it shines 
brighter than it did in youth. Let us to-day gaze on 
this star, each of us, and raise our thoughts to the 
sky: 

" Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, 
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid ; 

Star of the East, the horizon adorning, 

Point where our blessed Redeemer is laid." 

And may we all breathe, in our devotion, the spirit 
of those beautiful lines : 

" We come not with a costly store, 

O Lord, like them of old ; 
The masters of the starry lore 

From Ophir's shore of gold. 

" No weeping of the incense tree 

Are with the gifts we bring; 
No odorous myrrh of Araby 

Blends with our offering. 

" But still our love would bring its best, 

A spirit keenly tried 
By fierce affliction's fiery test, 

And seven times purified — 

" The fragrant graces of the mind, 

The virtues, that delight 
To give their perfume out, will find 

Acceptance in thy sight." 

The last lesson is confidence in God for the tri- 
umph of his Church. Let us trust him for a glorious 



The Visit of the Magians. 29 

future, and believe that in Christ there shall be here- 
after a complete subjection of all principalities and 
powers ; that the isles of the sea shall come to him, 
and the very ends of the earth be his ; the hea- 
then be given to our Christ for his possession, and 
the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance ; 
"the Gentiles shall come to his light, and kings to 
the brightness of his rising." 



30 Living Words. 



ii. 



THE SONG OF THE ANGELS. 

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly 
host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace, good-will toward men. — Luke ii, 13, lJj.. 



On last Christmas-day I spoke to you of the appear- 
ance of the " star." This star, as well as the other 
phenomena attending the advent of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, had this peculiar and distinct meaning, name- 
ly, that heaven and earth were brought together in 
the birth of our Redeemer. The babe lay in the 
cradle, the star moved in the firmament. The star 
in the visible heaven (always typical of the spiritual) 
pointed to the birthplace of the child on earth. 
The same thing is true of this shepherd story in the 
text. So simple are these narratives, so exquisite, so 
rich in the elements of spiritual significance, as well 
as of poetry, that they have taken the strongest hold 
upon the mind and imagination of the race. This 
tale of the shepherds is one of the most beautiful 
that you can tell to your children. Even in the 
earliest childhood, it will make their little ears open 
and their eyes dilate with wonder. The angelic 



The Song of the Angels. 31 

visit, like the quiet movement of the star, indicates 
that in the birth of the child at Bethlehem heaven 
and earth are brought together. " Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward 
men, ' This was not the song of the by-standers 
in the stable at Bethlehem. No ; the cradle was in 
the manger, and the manger was on the earth, and 
the child was born here ; but this angelic song was 
sung by the choirs in the upper world. The shep- 
herds were upon the earth ; but the shining throng 
that appeared at the utterance of the angel and 
joined in this glorious song — these came from afar, 
singing, as they descended from the distant heaven, 
" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
good-will toward men." Heaven and earth rejoiced 
together over the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem. 
And so, in fact, the whole problem to be wrought out 
by Christianity was just this : how earth and heaven 
were to be brought together ; how man could be 
reconciled to God ; how the separation which sin 
had made was to be brought to an end ; how the aw- 
ful chasm between infinite justice and purity, and 
man's guilt and vileness, was to be bridged over. 
This was the end of our Lord's coming into the 
world ; this is the sum of Christianity. This ques- 
tion, too, is the problem of all true philosophy and 
of all philanthropy. Some men call themselves phi- 
losophers and philanthropists who are ashamed or 



32 Living Words. 

afraid to call themselves Christians. If any of you 
belong to this class, I ask you whether there is any 
problem to be solved by civilization that is not im- 
plied in this one single question, " How shall man be 
reconciled to God — how shall the purity of the di- 
vine law be illustrated in the life of man on the 
earth ? " And is not the answer to this question the 
sum of Christianity? Was it not given in the an- 
gelic song, " Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace, good-will toward men ? " 

The song, in fact, is a proclamation of the objects 
of Christianity. Christianity proposes these objects, 
and proposes no other ; and whoever, through the 
pulpit or the press, or in any other way, pretending 
to be a Christian teacher, does propose ends which 
cannot be summed up in those three ideas of the an- 
gelic song — whoever does so — I warn you to be on 
your guard against him. The object of Christianity 
is all here — " Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace, good-will toward men." That is the 
whole of it. You may run out each single sentence 
of it into a whole system of theology, you may 
make books about it, and have philosophy founded 
upon it ; but, after all, you shall find the whole of 
Christianity to be summed up still in the song 
of the angelic host. And when, my brethren, in 
the upper land we dwell in peace and rest for ever- 
more, we shall hear "a great voice out of heaven 



The Song of the Angels. 33 

saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, 
and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his 
people, and God himself shall be with them, and be 
their God," and our praises shall all then be summed 
up in unity with the voices of angels and of arch- 
angels in the song of " Glory to God in the highest ; 
he hath visited and redeemed his people," That 
shall be the last, the eternal song, as it was the song 
of the angels in the beginning. 

So the life of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the earth 
was the working out and development of the song 
of the angels. It was " Glory to God" illustrated in 
his obedience, in his personal sacrifice, in his prayers 
and teachings, in his consecration and death. It was 
"peace*' in all the utterance of his lips ; peace beam- 
ing from his gentle eye ; peace spoken by daily acts ; 
peace in his bearing humbly and patiently the buffet- 
ings, and strokes, and insults, and injuries that were 
put upon him. His life was peace, for he was the 
" Prince of Peace." It was " good-will to man," for 
every thought, word, and act of that blessed life 
was the translation of God's infinite love into forms 
visible to the mortal eyes that saw him. 

We have then in our text a summing up of Chris- 
tianity. I shall not set it forth to you in dogmatical 
terms on this blessed Christmas morning, when we 
are nere to rejoice together, as eighteen hundred 
years ago the heavenly host rejoiced in welcoming 



34 Living Words. 

the Babe of Bethlehem. I shall give no doctrinal 
statements except to show the grounds for our 
rejoicing. 

" Glory to God in the highest," is the end and 
object of Christ's coming. But it is put at the very 
beginning of the song of the angels, and so it is the 
first thing to be wished for in the experience of 
every Christian. This is to be the end of the Chris- 
tian's strivings, as it should be the beginning of all 
his praises — " Glory to God in the highest." It is 
the motto of every humble, earnest, truthful soul. 
It is the heart's desire of every man that truly 
seeks to be saved by Christ's death, and to live in 
Christ's love. It is only when we allow the world 
to get hold of us ; when we permit a worldly spirit 
to get the better of Christ's spirit within us ; it is 
only then that we find the glory becomes dimmed, 
and this song is not the first utterance of heart, 
lip, and daily life. When we fall back among the 
men of the world we discover that they are not 
ready to join with the angels in giving glory to 
God ; they are not pleased with the division and dis- 
tribution of God's blessings which the angels make. 
"Glory to God, and peace to men" — that is not the 
object of their ambition or striving in the world. 
No ; the pride of man rather says, " Let me have it ; 
let me have the glory." But God says, " I will not 
give my glory to another." The pride of man says, " I 



The Song of the Angels. 35 

will have it for myself. Peace — let it go if need be ; 
I will have the glory at all risks, even though I live 
in strife forever." So you see there is a conflict be- 
tween God's arrangement of his gifts, and man's 
pride of heart and will. 

We may test ourselves on this beautiful Christmas 
morning, we may test our amount of Christmas joy, 
by this question : Are our daily lives an embodiment 
of this glory to be given to God on high, or are they 
mere struggles to attain wealth and the applause of 
men ; struggles for position, and to gratify our pride ; 
struggles in some way to secure, not glory to God, 
but glory unto ourselves ? O how this song of the 
angels strikes at the roots of all base ambition, of all 
earthliness and selfishness ! how it bids us empty 
ourselves of ourselves if we would be in sympathy 
with Christ ! 

Doctrinally, the song of the angels was justified 
by the fullness of the meaning of the act which they 
celebrated. The glory of God was illustrated more 
by the gift of his Son to save the world, in his life, 
his sufferings, and in his death, than it was in the 
creation of the material universe, or in the grander 
act of the creation of man. I grant that the "heav- 
ens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth 
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." 
I grant that we may, from the contemplation of the 



36 Living Words, 

physical aspects of nature, get grand and noble con- 
ceptions of the Creator. But yet we feel and believe 
that there is something higher. We look at the out- 
ward physical world, and are filled with wonder by 
its variety and beauty ; yet we feel that man's creation 
was a greater event — one over which "the morning 
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for 
joy." We feel this because of the moral and spiritual 
nature in man — because mere material nature is dull 
and dead ; while, on the other hand, the moral and spir- 
itual nature of man shall survive the wreck of matter 
and the crash of worlds. So when we examine into 
the moral and spiritual nature of man we get into a 
sphere above mere matter— vastly grander and more 
magnificent. 

"The morning stars sang together" at the creation 
of man. How beautiful the analogy ! We are not 
told the words of their song ; but when the angels 
came to tell the shepherds that, lying in the manger, 
wrapped in swaddling-bands, they would find the 
babe who was to be the Saviour of mankind, straight- 
way there came through the air the nobler song of a 
new creation. How clearly those heralds of glory 
rang out the purpose of that creation in the anthem, 
" Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, 'good- 
will toward men." 

We find too, in the mediation of Christ, introduced 
by the babe in the cradle, a greater display of the 



The Song of the Angels. 37 

wisdom of God, and also of the love and justice of 
God, than all his creation before had offered. Of 
wisdom — because Christ himself was "the wisdom 
of God." It lay incarnate in the infant in the cradle. 
Because, also, the Gospel of the Son of God is " the 
wisdom of God in a mystery." Of justice — because, 
whatever our conception of the justice of God as 
gathered from his strokes upon humanity might be, 
we can get no conception of it so full and so vivid, 
as is shown by the gift of his Son to suffer and 
die that the world might be redeemed through 
him. Go to the cradle of that babe as he lies in 
the manger, and as you look down upon his fair 
face, and upon the beautiful eyes as they open to 
gaze upon you, anticipate the history of that child — 
the life of sorrow, the long and weary years of grief 
and pain. Anticipate the agonies of Calvary and the 
tortures of the cross ; the apparent wreck of all his 
aims there when, in his anguish, he cried, " My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " Anticipate 
all this, and then say whether the justice of God was 
not shown far more terribly in this than in any of 
the severities which history records against humanity. 
And so of his grace and love, had I the time to dwell 
upon them ; but I have only mentioned these doctri- 
nal hints to show you the justice of the angels' song 
of " Glory to God." 
The next element of the song was ( ' Peace on 



38 Living Words. 

earth," and this was to be secured by the coming o> 
the babe, because that babe was to be the Mediatoi 
between God and man. Let us go back to the 
Prophets, and see what they have to say of the 
coming of the Messiah. Hear Isaiah : " Comfort ye, 
comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye 
comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her 
warfare is accomplished!' But how ? because " her 
iniquity is pardoned!' Here is the root of it all. The 
long war between God and man is over — the strife 
between the eternal throne and God's rebellious sub- 
jects is ended for evermore ; the Prince of Peace has 
come. And Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, 
says he came " that he might reconcile both unto 
God in one body by the cross, having slain the en- 
mity thereby : and came and preached peace to you 
which were afar off, and to them that were nigh." 
And in that wondrous passage describing the char- 
acter of the child that shall be born — in the ninth 
chapter of Isaiah — the very last of the great names 
given to him is " Prince of Peace." The " Prince of 
Peace," because he is to take upon his own shoul- 
ders the strokes due to a condemned and sinning 
world ; the " Prince of Peace," because he is to 
make an offering of his own blood as a sacrifice 
through which " God can be just, and yet justify 
the ungodly ;" the " Prince of Peace," because he is 
to bring peace by burying in his own blessed and 



The So7ig of the Angels. 39 

innocent bosom the sword of the divine vengeance 
forever. 

And further, God has offered to mankind, in thus 
incarnating His own peace — peace to the individual 
soul as the fruit of Christ's mediation : a peace which 
is perfect and knoweth no fear, because the soul at 
peace with God has no right, and no necessity, to fear 
any thing else than the anger of God. As a Chris- 
tian, you can live always in this atmosphere of peace. 
What though business be not prosperous ? What 
though you are unsuccessful in the affairs of life ? 
For what is prosperity — what is success ? There is 
no real, permanent, enduring prosperity to any man 
unless God, through Christ, has given His peace to 
his soul. So that, going out of this church and be- 
lieving that that peace of God is in your soul, no 
strife of the world, no care of business, no sorrows or 
afflictions will disturb your Christmas joy to-day. 

But there is something else implied : not only peace 
to the individual soul, but peace between man and 
mait. Christ is not only the mediator between God 
and man, but also between man and man. So true is 
this, that the influence of Christianity in any given 
age — I mean Christianity as a social power, as an 
element working among men — may be tested and 
measured by the peace or wars that prevail in the 
world in that age. Its bonds are peace ; its fruits 
are peace ; its attributes are peace ; its joys are joys 



40 Living Words. 

of peace ; the Christian home is a home of peace, 
and the Christian land is a land of peace ; Christian- 
ity is all peace ; and when the earth is all Christian, 
when the last enemy shall have been overthrown, 
when the last banner of heathendom shall have been 
torn down and trampled in the dust, then, in all the 
earth, there shall be no sound of war forever — for 
men shall have beaten " their swords into plowshares 
and their spears into pruning-hooks," and shall " learn 
war no more." 

Do not deceive yourselves on this point. I know 
how the pride of the world treats this question, 
and how even some Christian philosophers treat it. 
I know that you may read, in books, of war as the 
great civilizer, and of its necessity to the culture, 
and even to the moral development, of the race in 
its higher and nobler attributes. I grant that war 
may be a useful scourge for a people sunk in luxury 
and debauchery, and for all others out of whom man- 
liness and virtue are crushed. But so may pesti- 
lence, and famine, and all the spectre forms of evil. 
Shall we pray, therefore, that such evils may be in- 
flicted by our God ? No, brethren ; it is not for 
Christian men to preach the beneficence of war. 
God in his own way may use his " besom of destruc- 
tion" and "purge his threshing-floor." It is the 
Christian minister's work to proclaim peace and to 
glorify it. The King under whose banner we serve 



The Song of the Angels. 41 

is the Prince of Peace, and we live to illustrate his 
peace in our lives. Show it forth, then, in your in- 
tercourse with all men — show it forth in the family 
circle, in society, in your political relations. I say 
this because I believe in my heart, not only from 
the teachings of the Bible, but also from the largest 
lessons of life that I have been able to gather from 
history, that the true progress of Christianity among 
men, that the true progress of civil and religious 
liberty in all ages, has been retarded, rather than 
advanced, by every single effort in which Christians 
have endeavored to wield the sword aggressively 
for its advancement. " For the weapons of our 
warfare are not carnal," though "mighty through 
God." The sword of God's Spirit is the only weap- 
on that is mighty in the destruction of the strong- 
holds of Satan. If any of you, therefore, are in 
danger of imbibing the idea that Christian principles, 
theories, or reforms can be advanced by hard blows, 
remember our Christmas lesson in the song of the 
angels, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good- will toward men." 

And we come to this last as the source of all the 
rest — God's good-will to man. This existed in the 
beginning, in the depths of his eternity. It was the 
cause of the creation ; it was the fountain of man's 
redemption — that redemption by the birth of the 
Babe of Bethlehem. " God so loved the world, that 



42 Living Words. 

he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
lieveth on him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." 

God's good-will to man planned this whole scheme 
of redemption ; God's good-will communicated the 
power, as well as the wisdom, that carried forth this 
scheme of redemption ; and God's good-will shall be 
the power to carry it on to the end. 

And so God's good-will to man is to be the model 
of our intercourse with our neighbors, the basis of all 
our action, the ground of all our feelings. To learn 
that lesson let us this day go back to the cradle at 
Bethlehem. A babe is lying there in his humble 
swathings, and a manger is the home that holds 
him. But the child that lies there comes to save a 
ruined world ; his voice shall quell the storms of 
battle that rage between earth and heaven ; his voice 
shall chase back to their native hell all the powers 
of darkness ; and at last that voice shall summon all 
the sleeping tenants of the grave, and call us to a 
better and eternal home. 

Shall we not, then, to-day join in this angelic song? 

" 'Tis Heaven's new song of love 

That wakes those strains above, 
And from the angel lips now bursts again ; 

It sounds through all the sky, 

' Glory to God on high, 
Peace on the warring earth, good-will to men ! ' 
For God now dwells with man below, 
To cause the guilty soul with seraph's love to glow. 



The Song of the Angels. 43 

" My Saviour and my God, 

Who on this globe hath trod, 
Though million orbs of day for thee are gleaming, 

My fettered soul set free, 

And teach the minstrelsy, 
The rescued sinners' burning heart beseeming ; 
Then will I strike my harp of gold, 
And sing thy grace, and love, and power, for years untold ! " 

And shall we not to-day make of ourselves a new 
dedication ? The ecclesiastical year in the early 
ages of the Church began with Easter ; but in the 
sixth century its beginning was wisely changed from 
Easter to Advent. It comes appropriately at this 
season of the year, at the turn of the winter solstice, 
when the darkest day has passed, and the days are 
growing longer, and each day brighter. Shall it 
not be so with us ? Shall not every day be brighter 
from this time on in our own souls ? Shall we not be 
purer and more devoted and earnest in our lives and 
in our love for Him who gave himself as a sacrifice 
for us ? So let us abound in acts of faith, trust, love, 
charity, and tenderness, that these Christmas joys 
shall be sanctified to every one of us. God grant 
that the pleasant festivities of to-morrow, and all the 
happiness of this general period of joy and thankful- 
ness, may be sanctified to you all, old and young 
alike, and cause you to walk nearer to God, and make 
your light shine clearer and brighter than ever 
before ! 

The contemplation of even the earthly aspect of 



44 Living Words. 

Christ's history should impel us to generous and 
loving deeds. Take care of your poor in this Christ- 
mas time. A very little from you will make the 
home — I don't know it, but you need not to be in- 
formed where it is — of some poor creature, some 
family struggling in poverty, happy with Christmas 
cheer. Yes, remember the poor ; for it was to bless 
and cheer them that the Babe of Bethlehem came. 
And then, too, if there are any acts of kindness 
which you ought to have done during the year to- 
ward any member of your family, or to some friend 
or neighbor, any service which you have neglected 
or postponed ; or if there be any claims upon your 
charity or generosity which you have failed to meet, 
do not let this Christmas week pass over without 
doing all your duty. So will your hearts be lighter, 
purer, and happier ; so will you be worthier to join 
in the song of the angels, " Glory to God in the high- 
est, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." 



The Milestones of Life. 45 



in. 

THE MILE-STONES OF LIFE. 

Redeeming the Time. Col. iv, 5. 



I have no metaphysical definition of time to offer 
you this morning. It is quite sufficient for the pur- 
poses of our text, and of the sermon, to say that the 
time in which we are concerned is the period of our 
present life whatever that may be, longer or shorter. 
" Of all which is necessary to man for the accom- 
plishment of his design," says St. Augustine, " there 
is nothing which less depends upon himself, nothing 
which is less at his disposal, than future time. We 
can found no pretensions upon it ; it is not ours. If 
there be any folly, therefore, greater than another, it 
is the folly of wasting the present and trusting in the 
future." And yet if there be any folly to which man- 
kind are more prone than others it is precisely this. 
Let us look at the meaning of this text for ourselves, 
taking it to refer to our personal life and the oppor- 
tunities which life affords us. Let us ask first, What 
is meant by redeeming the time ? and then, Why we 
should redeem the time ; and these two points are 
those to which I ask your attention. 



46 Living Words. 

The simplest answer that can be given to the ques- 
tion, "What is meant by redeeming the time ?" is, that 
we use it as it is given, and for the purposes for which 
it is given to us. And what is the purpose of our hu- 
man life ? Most of us are unconscious of any pur- 
pose, at all events of our own. Be that as it may, the 
Almighty has purposes, and he has designed that 
your life shall have a purpose and an aim. I grant, 
that in a perfectly healthy condition of the moral 
and physical system it would not be likely that we 
should be conscious of an individual purpose in the 
course of our human life ; that if our whole being 
were working normally, according to the original de- 
sign of God, then, as is the case with every perfectly 
healthful organization, we should not think of a pur- 
pose, or it would be worked out naturally without any 
special consciousness on our part. A tree, for in- 
stance, that grows from the smallest seed, or whatevei 
the seed may be, an acorn or a chestnut, or any other 
you please, grows up in obedience to the law of its 
nature without any consciousness. So throughout all 
nature, and throughout the animate creation, before 
we come to ourselves as responsible beings we find 
this law prevailing. It would be the same under a 
perfectly healthful condition of humanity. The fact 
that consciousness of weakness, of want, of evil or of 
good, comes upon us, shows that there is more or less 
disorder in the organization. Take your own physi- 



The Mile-stones of Life. 47 

cal organization as an example. A man is never 
conscious that he has a heart until there is some 
disturbance of it ; until, after some undue exertion, 
he feels a slight palpitation ; but when it becomes 
more or less disordered the consciousness is ever 
present, ever painful ; it disappears as the disorder 
disappears, and returns as it returns, but never 
passes away entirely. 

And now with reference to this sinful organization 
of ours. We are in a condition to look into our 
being and find the purpose of it. This is undenia- 
ble, for we are rational beings, and know — if we 
give the subject any consideration at all — that our 
life is not what God intended it to be, that the pur- 
pose of our organization is more or less frustrated, 
that the faculties we have are not disposed of as God 
designed them to be. What, then, is the object of 
our human life as God inscribes it in his word, and 
writes it upon the functions of our minds and hearts ? 
I cannot answer it better than in the words of the 
old Catechism : " That we should glorify God, and 
enjoy him forever." 

Whatever occupation of our time, then, comes with- 
in this definition of the aim of our being is a rightful 
occupation, and whatever employment of our time may 
not be embraced in this is a wrong employment of 
it. Let us examine the occupations of human life. 
We are at one of the landmarks and eras of time. 



48 Living Words. 

The beginning of the New Year ought to be for each 
of us a time of consideration and thought ; not, in 
fact, that there is any thing special about the first 
day of the year, except that it is one of those ordinary 
landmarks and mile-stones that tell us how much of 
the journey we have gone over. Alas ! there are no 
mile-stones for the future, no limit up to which we can 
say our journey is to go, and where it is to end. 
Those New Years' days that we look back upon, 
those white stones, are but sepulchres of the years 
that are gone ; and the more of them there have been, 
the fewer there will be. What wealth you have in 
the shape of time — I do not say you have it at 
all, for it is God's- — but the more you have had you 
have so much the less to gain. 

Let us look to the occupations of our human life 
with relation to the law of God, and see whither we 
are tending, where we are, and what hopes we have 
for the future. 

There is a story told of a monk to whom a young 
man, in whom he was deeply interested, came to talk 
of the prospects of his life. He was a young man of 
talent and high aspirations, and desired to indulge 
them because of his capacity and position in life. 
He spoke of his present plans. 

" And then," said the old man, " you are to go to 
the University, are you ? "• 

" Yes." 



The Mile-stones of Life. 49 

"And stay there until you are twenty-five years 
of age?" 

" Yes. And then I shall enter upon the discharge 
of my public functions, which will enable me to ac- 
cumulate wealth." 

"What then?" 

" Why, then I shall have all that makes life com- 
fortable, and shall be able to enjoy it,, perhaps, for 
many years." 

* What then?" 

" I shall then be an old gray-haired man, and shall 
live so many years longer." 

" What then ? " 

And so the confession had to come, that all of these 
plans and purposes and aims could have but one 
ending. The priest preached no other sermon to the 
young man but that single utterance, " What then ? " 
and perhaps it might be enough for you to-day if 
you should take the thought and bring it home, and 
let it govern your life for the year. " What then ? " 
All the purposes of life of which that young man was 
conscious were bounded solely by the horizon of this 
world ; he had not taken into account the greater 
end and aim, which alone could dignify all these years 
of labor, and give character to his pursuits and en- 
noble them. Let us see, then, that we be wiser. 

Our occupations in this life are definitely fixed for 
us to a certain extent by the very necessities of life. 



50 Living Words. 

We are put here to live a certain term of years, and 
God permits us to live as long as our organization is 
capable of existing. We must have our food and 
clothing and shelter ; we must have the graces and 
arts of life necessary for the cultivation of our minds, 
the enlargement of our sphere of thinking, and the 
purification of our sensibilities. This necessity is 
fixed upon us, and it is our duty to attend to our 
personal culture and education, and fit ourselves for 
the practical line of life that opens before us. We 
are to discharge the ordinary duties of life, and, more 
than this, to attend to our personal culture merely 
for the purposes of culture, because God has given 
us minds designed for culture, and they never meet 
the end for which God intended them unless we do 
our best for them. 

When we have attained a proper degree of educa- 
tion for business, professional or otherwise, it is our 
duty to use the time necessary for the discharge of 
that duty ; to redeem the time properly, will be to 
use whatever time is necessary for the discharge of 
our daily duties in life. You know that limit very 
well. You may fall behind it, and then you are ig- 
norant ; you may go beyond it, and then you are 
grasping ; your own experience has taught you what 
you ought to do, and what you cannot do. 

There are claims of society, and these are not to be 
trenched upon by any other. Some men for the sake 



The Mile-stones of Life. 51 

of their own personal culture neglect society alto- 
gether. Some men are so given up to business and 
trade that they neglect society altogether. And yet 
this neglect reacts upon those who are guilty of it. A 
man never voluntarily withdraws himself from the 
ordinary duties he owes to neighbors and friends ex- 
cept at his own peril. He finds that those whom he 
neglects neglect him, and are willing to neglect him. 
It becomes part of our duty to take care of the so- 
cial interests of our family, and our own individual 
relations to society, and see that they do not suffer. 
We ought to keep our friendships in repair, as John- 
son has beautifully expressed it, by cultivating old 
friends, and forming new ones whenever we can. 
How we ourselves suffer for allowing the old warm 
affections of our boyhood to be cooled and chilled, 
and finally put out, by the business interests and am- 
bition of life ! And then how we suffer if we make 
no new friends — going on to be old, and finding our- 
selves alone ! How much better, and happier, and 
more beautiful, to make some new friends every year 
among the young, and get some young hearts twined 
about ours that shall, by and by, support us when we 
grow old and need the support of kindliness and 
love ! 

There are recreations that take of necessity a por- 
tion of our time. I say recreation, and say it of set 
purpose. One of the things which we need to learn 



52 Living Words. 

is the distinction between recreation and amusement. 
The mass of people use the words as if they were 
entirely synonymous ; but if we examine their mean- 
ing we shall find that they are two different things. 
The time spent in recreation is time wisely spent, 
according to a law of our nature. It is utterly im- 
possible to keep the bow always bent without break- 
ing, or to keep the human mind in that full tension 
of study continually without injuring the mind itself. 
We need and must have recreation of some sort. 
What is the distinction between recreation and 
amusement ? Recreation is change of employment, 
that is all. It is a very beautiful law of our nature 
that it is so ; that the mind rests and recovers its 
energies for new toil by the mere change of employ- 
ment. I do not speak of the recreation of sleep and 
forgetfulness, which is purely physical, but of those 
recreations in which the mind is interested. The 
recreation of society, of conversation — that is not 
indolence ; but though the mind acts, it is acting 
in quite a different way from the duties of study or 
business. We become refreshed unconsciously. 
And so with the recreation of travel and sight-seeing, 
and that which we enjoy in the study of the arts : 
the mind rests in the study of these things, though 
at the same time we may make a labor of them. 
Amusements are something which are entirely ex- 
terior to the mind itself, external spectacles ; stimu- 



The Milestones of Life. 53 

lants, properly so called. Take the theatre, to which 
many go for what they call recreation : they go there 
really for amusement — that their minds may be en- 
tirely dissipated ; or, if they have got past that — for 
the illusion of the theatre is very trifling, and soon 
passes away for those used to it — they go there in 
order that some new spectacle may rouse their 
minds, and stimulate their passions to an unwonted 
activity. What is the theatre at best, as at present 
existing, but a stage on which are exhibited human 
passions, and exhibited so as to stimulate the pas- 
sions of the spectators ? You would not go your- 
selves into your neighbor's house to see the spectacle 
of jealousy exhibited, or go to the other side of the 
way to see envy or hatred exhibited ; you would 
not go there that yourselves and your children could 
see the show. You might thus, if you chose, see 
acted the whole catalogue of deadly sins. You will 
find them, one in this house, another in that, and 
yet you do not run to see them ; but you would 
rather shun them, and beg your children to shun 
them. And yet the theater is a gathering together 
of these into one focus — jealousy, revenge, envy, 
lust, violence, wrong — not in separate households, 
but all embodied at once, and some of us look, and 
take our children to look, and call that recreation ! 
And so I might go through a number of what are 
called recreations of society, but I prefer leaving 



54 Living Words. 

them to your own thoughts. You can amuse your 
children at home by giving them suitable recreation. 
It is your duty to make your own house the one of 
all others in which they shall most delight to be ; 
but if you take your children to the theatre or the 
opera, for their amusement, in their childhood, you 
are fostering a taste for high stimulants, and de- 
stroying that great source of happiness — satisfaction 
with pure and simple pleasures. Begin by taking 
children to the opera at the age of thirteen or fif- 
teen, and you destroy this possibility. They cannot 
be satisfied with simple pleasures afterward. I am 
speaking simply the sober truth, and leave it to wise 
men to judge of what I say. 

We find the ordinary occupations of life applying 
only to the outward environment of life, while these 
outward manifestations are, after all, so to speak, 
only life's scaffolding. Does it not seem strange, 
then, that a man should toil from morning till night 
only to find a house to cover himself and children, 
and procure food and raiment for them ? And yet 
it is the law of God that it should be so for the 
mass of mankind. This very labor itself is God's 
blessing. These employments are intended to train 
us to discipline our minds and habits, and fix us in 
steadfast ways. We are getting discipline in the 
performance of these duties in the counting-house, 
in the kitchen, in the household, in the shop, or on 



The Mile-stones of Life. 55 

the farm. These duties are not inconsistent with 
spiritual interests, or even unfavorable to them, be- 
cause God means that a large part of our time should 
be so employed. 

Let us turn, secondly, to the inner life — the edifice 
of which all this outward show is but the scaffolding. 
We are to " redeem the time " for repentance and 
faith, for holy living, for acts of charity, for advancing 
the kingdom of Christ in the earth ; time for re- 
pentance toward God, and for faith toward our Lord 
Jesus. This is the first step in this inner life. Have 
you taken that step, my friend ? O, it may be that 
you have not found the time for this ! You find time 
for study, for employment, for idleness, for recreation, 
for the counting-room, the theatre, the ball-room, 
any thing, every thing, but have never found time yet 
for this ! And now, to-day, I come, with as earnest a 
heart and as earnest a voice as God gives me, to 
bring to you, and say, " Redeem the time." This is 
the new year's bidding to you, that you redeem the 
time. Repent of your sins, and believe in the Lord 
Jesus ! 

And, then, " Redeem the time " for the continu- 
ance of this godly life, for holy living, for acts of 
charity, for public-spirited benevolence, for enlarging 
the kingdom of God by all the means in our power. 
Are you too busy for this ? If so, you have taken so 
strong a view of that part of our duty which lies in 



$6 Living Words. 

the outward environment that you have forgotten 
the other. " O, but I am so full of business and 
care ! I find time for these things, but I must do 
my benevolence by proxy." You may be very poor, 
and, if so, I would not say a word that could touch 
such a position as yours, or hurt it ; you may have 
to be occupied from the early dawn until late at 
night in getting the means of living ; if this be so, I 
only wish this New Year's morning God may bless 
you, and that the time may soon come when it may 
not be necessary for you to be digging and delving 
every hour. God never meant us to be such ma- 
chines as that. It may be that you have passed 
beyond this, and have gained a comfortable position 
in life. And you may say, " My business engrosses 
me so that I cannot find time." You find time for 
recreation ; take care that you do not redeem your 
time thus, only for the devil ! that you do not occupy 
your time thus, to find at last that you missed the 
whole aim of life. Any man may get rich that will 
set about it ; if he will stint himself and his family 
in- all the comforts of life, and spend every hour dig- 
ging, digging, grubbing, grubbing, with his head 
downward, he may get rich — and " What then ? " It 
may be that you have given too much of your time 
to your studies — as if all virtue an4 godliness con- 
sisted in the student's occupation ! in that which, 
after all, is purely personal to yourself; which may 



The Mile-stones of Life. 57 

be corroding your moral nature and eating out the 
image of God ! 

For the enlargement of Christ's kingdom we must 
" redeem the time." If I come to you to ask for a 
charity in your places of business, perhaps I ought 
not to expect much of your time, because your places 
of business are to be devoted to business ; but if I 
come to your private house to ask for a charity, and 
spread before you some plan for enlarging Christ's 
kingdom, or diffusing his truth, or improving the 
condition of the poor, is it always the case that you 
are willing even then to listen, to give attention to the 
subject, and occupy your mind with it ? No, not 
always ; not often. There are some who have got 
this into their minds — that they are to live to do 
good and glorify God ; but most of us do nothing 
more than what we are pinned down to, and cannot 
escape from. Let us begin this new year by taking 
a nobler view of our own individual destiny — that we 
are put here by God to be agents for the extension 
of God's kingdom, and let us endeavor, now at least, 
if we have never done it before, to do our whole 
duty. Study the work God has put upon you, men 
of New York ! In this city, from which go forth 
streams of thought, and sentiment, and feeling that 
regulate the moral growth of this whole land ; in 
this city you are set as lights — let your light 
shine ! 



58 Living Words. 

What a year this last has been for openings for 
the spread of the kingdom of God ! The world has 
all changed since five or ten years ago. There is 
work for us to diffuse God's kingdom throughout the 
earth, more than enough. Who ever dreamed of the 
openings that the great East to-day affords for the 
spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ? Those miser- 
able wars in India, what has come of them ? The 
Gospel will have freer course in India than ever it 
had before. That miserable opium war in China, 
what results has it borne ? This one thing Divine 
Providence has adduced as good out of the evil, that 
China will be open to the preaching of the Gospel as 
it never was before. The expressions of fancy that 
had gone out about Japan, as a land of perpetual 
beauty and golden affluence — all this was fanciful ; 
and we learn that it is a plain, simple land like our 
own, but rich in grains and natural productions, and 
that we can go to Japan soon and preach the Gospel 
without let or hindrance. Here are fields which can- 
not be neglected. 

We must not suffer our time to be taken up with 
idle dreams, or in mere worldly pleasure. We must 
be earnest in our work. The history of the world 
shows that energetic vice is stronger than indolent 
virtue ; that the man who is the strongest is master 
of the rest, whether he be a good or a bad man ; that 
industry commands success. What is history itself, 



The Mile-stones of Life. 59 

warp and woof, but the actions of the busiest lead- 
ers of the race ? Indolence has no place in creation. 
There is no place for a lazy man in the plan of God's 
government ; he is a blot upon creation. Worth- 
less to himself, and worthless to his fellows, he had 
better pass away, and hide himself from the sight of 
men. Young people, if you feel the spirit of indo- 
lence at any time, remember that these golden mo- 
ments of youth are to be employed in personal cul- 
ture, and in getting the means of doing good. 

I spoke a little while ago of getting time for recre- 
ation. We must not let this go too far. The dispo- 
sition to find pleasure every-where is the mark of a 
feeble intellect and of a low grade of moral power. 
If there be one reason more than another why the 
tyrants of Europe keep down the masses, it is that 
the masses are trained to habits of extravagant and 
undue recreation and amusement. People who want 
to be in a beer garden or a flower garden one half or 
one third of every day are not fit to be free. As we 
allow a love of pleasure to encroach upon the indus- 
trious occupations of life or the duties we owe to 
God, we are losing the freedom and power that be- 
long to us as Christians. If there be a man of pleas- 
ure here to-day, properly so called, I would say to 
him, God Almighty has not sent you into this world 
to merely play the lool and enjoy yourself ! Indeed, 
it matters very little to mankind or to God whether 



60 Living Words. 

you enjoy yourself or not. The object of your life is 
to glorify God and enjoy him forever! 

And now, Why should we redeem the time ? The 
answer to this has been already, to a certain extent, 
given in unfolding the duty of redeeming the time ; 
but I may put it specifically in one or two points that 
may arrest your attention for the coming year. 

One of the points is, that time is the seed-time for 
eternity. Many figures are used in the word of God 
to illustrate our life, but none more frequently than 
this. Every act is a seed. " Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap." And, as to us, we 
are sowing all the time ; our hands are ever full of 
seeds, and every movement we make scatters them, 
and they take root. We are sowing, it may be, good 
seed that shall spring up to everlasting life, or it may 
be tares, or poisonous seeds, that shall grow up here- 
after to destroy us. My friends, there are acts of 
yours in days and years gone by that perhaps you 
have forgotten ; many of them you try to forget ; 
but they are not forgotten in the great harvest-field 
of God — they were seeds, they have sprung up, and 
shall one day confront you ! Every hour of your 
time, every moment, has been such a seed as this. 
You have sown it and forgotten it, but it is recorded 
on high, and you shall one day answer for it. 

Your present life is the seed-time of eternity : that 
is to say, you are all immortal beings — you cannot 



The Mile-stones of Life. 6 1 

divest yourselves of this attribute which God has 
given you to make you like himself; you cannot, if 
you would, divest yourselves of it. You may " shuffle 
off this mortal coil " by suicide, you may put an end 
to this outward physical life, but you cannot commit 
suicide of the soul, so as to put an end to it. You 
may destroy all that makes it worth having, all its 
possibilities of bliss, but you cannot put an end to it. 
You will live forever in spite of yourself! So if the 
seed you are sowing be good seed it will spring up 
in everlasting life, and you shall enjoy it to all eter- 
nity ; but if the seed be bad — the black seed of dam- 
nation — it will come up again hereafter, and you shall 
suffer for it forever and forever. Then let us use 
our time well, let us redeem this seed-time that God 
has given us, so that we may be laying up a harvest 
of everlasting joy. 

And further, because it is the only seed-time. " I 
must work the works of Him that sent me, while it 
is day : the night cometh, when no man can work." 
We must work the works of Him that sent us while 
it is yet day, and yet we allow one day to pass after 
another ; we form other plans and purposes which 
we intend to carry out, regardless of the one grand 
purpose of our lives. " It shall be to-morrow, next 
year, when I get a little older, when I have accom- 
plished this, that, and the other. Remember, " what- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy mighty 



62 Living Words. 

for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in 
the grave whither thou goest." There is no purga- 
tory in which you can pluck up these plants from the 
old seed. It is a fiction devised to quiet the con- 
sciences of those who have wasted their years and 
misspent their time. You have no warrant for this 
fiction in the Scriptures. Their whole lesson is that 
a man's life is as one seed-time, that whatsoever seed 
he sows that shall he reap. As the tree falls, so it 
must lie. Our doom is fixed at death. If we repent 
not before our years are spent, in truth we shall 
never repent at all ; if we are not saved in this 
world, we shall never be ; if we do not make use of 
this time of probation, God's mercy will never, never 
reach us again ! 

We should redeem the time because we know not 
how little of it we may have to redeem. The past, 
the present, and the future, that is all we can say 
about it. We must divide it into these three, and 
there is nothing else. The past, what is it ? It is 
gone, and will never be back again. You have no 
control over it, none whatever. And the future, 
what do you know of that ? It is not, and may never 
be, for you ; you have no control of that. What is 
left ? The present. It is gone as I have uttered it ; 
it is gone, gone with the breath of my mouth. 
Brethren, we have only a second at a time. Ah, this 
infinitely precious time, which God gives us, he gives 



The Mile-stones of Life. 6$ 

it thus as a magic diamond, glittering, shining, and 
sparkling for the moment, and then gone for ever- 
more. Precious as it is, it is gone, and we cannot 
hold it. We can only hold it by giving it to God ! 
If we do not do this the sparkling gem is dust — it is 
worse than dust. It is laid up against us to con- 
demn us hereafter for the waste of it. 

I do not know any thing finer in the Old Testament 
than the story told of David when he was in the cave 
of Adullam, when the Philistines were encamped at 
Rephaim, and at the end of the plain. David had 
nothing to drink for twenty-four hours, and as he 
lay panting in the cave, with his men of arms about 
him, he said, " O that one would give me drink of 
the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the 
gate!" It was an ejaculation which fierce thirst 
wrung from him. There were three brave men who 
at once determined to gratify his wish, and they 
went over the plain, where the arrows were raining 
down upon them ; but through the midst of these 
hurtling arrows and flying javelins they went to the 
well of Bethlehem and got the water, and brought a 
gourd full of it to the king to slake his thirst. I 
know nothing richer or grander in the Old Testa- 
ment, nor in the history of man, than David's conduct 
then. He would not drink of it, but poured it out as 
a libation to the Lord ; and why ? " My God for- 
bid it me, that I should do this thing : shall I drink 



64 Living Words. 

the blood of these men that have put their lives 
in jeopardy ? for with the jeopardy of their lives they 
brought it ! " Do you see the application I would 
make of this ? Every hour of your human life and 
mine, every drop of this precious time, which God 
gives us in drops, was purchased with a dearer blood 
and more fearful peril of sacrifice than this. It was 
not merely through the arrows hurled from the tow- 
ers of Bethlehem, it was not merely breasting the 
javelins of the Philistines, that Christ our Saviour 
purchased for us the gift of this precious time al- 
lowed to us in life. O no ! He received into his 
divine breast all the arrows of hell, he poured out 
his most precious blood in sorrow and agony, to buy 
this time for you and me. Shall we drink up these 
hours that Christ has purchased, and waste them as 
they come ? O no ! Say rather, I will pour them 
out to the Lord, I will glorify Him with this time that 
He has purchased for me. 

To you who are members of the Christian Church 
may this be a year in which you will exhibit more 
practical personal religion, and labor more zealously 
for the enlargement of the Church and the develop- 
ment of Christ's kingdom, than ever you did before ! 
Take larger and nobler views of your duty to your 
family, to your neighbors, to your Church, to your 
God ! To those who are sinners I say, Repent now. 
Do not say, I will repent, but, I do repent. You do 



The Mile-stones of Life. 65 

not know how much time you may have to spend ; 
you do not know even that you will live to pass out 
of that door. Do not say I will believe, but I be- 
lieve now. Give your heart to God, and resolve that 
hereafter you will endeavor to be a Christian. Be a 
Christian this morning, by humbly submitting your- 
self before God. 

I give to this congregation the New Year's wish, 
the most beautiful a Pastor could wish to his people — 
that which Aaron, at the command of God, gave to 
Israel — that God's blessing may rest upon you : 
" The Lord bless thee, and keep thee : the Lord 
make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
thee : the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, 
and give thee peace." 



66 Living Words, 



IV. 
THE WAY TO FORGIVENESS. 

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. — I John t, 9. 



In every system of morals, Pagan or Christian, the 
duty of self-scrutiny has been acknowledged. " Know 
thyself" was said to have been the inscription on the 
temple of Apollo, and the inscription was declared to 
have come down from on high.* In the Christian 
scheme of morality this duty is enjoined with a 
stricter earnestness, because it is apter to the whole 
Christian idea of the relation between God and man 
than it could have been to the Pagan idea. The duty 
of confessing our sins is enjoined in the Christian 
system, and by the Christian Scriptures, strictly and 
repeatedly. In fact, there is very little disposition to 
question that this is a duty, and men in general are so 
ready to acknowledge it that it has been made the 
basis of many an imposture and many a corruption 
in the Christian system. There was a time when 
throughout the whole of Christendom the confession 

*"A precept," says Cicero, "of so much force and wisdom that 
we dare not ascribe it to any man, but to the oracle of God alone." 



The Way to Forgiveness. 67 

of sins to God, and God alone, was the general prac- 
tice ; but the Church of Rome has by degrees — for the 
doctrine and practice of auricular confession came 
up by degrees — formed out of this simple duty 
(taking this text as one of the strong foundations of 
the doctrine and the precept) that system of auricular 
confession, of confession to a priest at set times — the 
confession of all sins, venial or mortal, no matter of what 
class, no matter against whom, or when, or how com- 
mitted — has formed, out of this plain duty of confess- 
ing to Almighty God the sins we have committed 
against Him, that scheme which inevitably binds the 
minds of the laity in a chain of bondage of which 
none but the priest has the key. No such tyranny 
as this is contemplated in our text, or inculcated any- 
where else in the Bible ; nowhere in the New Testa- 
ment is it made the duty of the priest to be the me- 
diator between God and man. There is but one 
mediator between God and man according to the 
Christian system, the man Christ Jesus. The Chris- 
tian minister is a teacher of Christian people it is true ; 
but a priest he is not, and never can be. This is the 
great distinction between the Pagan and the Chris- 
tian systems ; the distinction between mediator and 
teacher. There was no such thing as a moral 
teacher among the Pagan priests. The priest sacri- 
ficed, and led the people in those oblations which 
they made with the intention of conciliating their 



68 Living Words. 

angry gods, whom they believed to be vengeful, and 
passionate and unjust ; sacrificing the victim at the 
altar, and standing in the place of the people as a 
mediator, but never teaching. No priest of Jupiter 
ever preached a sermon. On the other hand the 
Christian scheme has its ministers, it is true, but 
these ministers are never priests ; they make no sac- 
rifices, they offer none, for they know that there re- 
mains now no more sacrifice for sin ; that Jesus 
Christ made an end of the system of sacrifices so far 
as sacrifices can be vicarious or propitiatory. Not 
only do there remain no more sacrifices for sin, but 
there is now only a fearful looking forward for a 
judgment that is to come. The duty of the Chris- 
tian minister is to lead his people, to teach them the 
news of Christ's Gospel, and present them ever with 
things new and old by way of warning, encourage- 
ment, or reproof; but never by way of mediation, 
never putting himself between his people and God, 
to take the place of the Lord Jesus, the only media- 
tor between man and God. Our text implies and 
teaches the doctrine of confession to God alone. It 
is before Him that our knees are to be bent, never 
to a mortal man, never by way of confessing sin to a 
fellow-being presumed to be holier — humbling the 
intellect and the heart — never ! never ! Before God 
we are all equal, whether learned in God's law or 
otherwise ; before Him we are all sinners, and all 



The Way to Forgiveness. 69 

alike bound to come to Him, humbly and meekly 
confessing our sins. 

The duty of confession to God, and not to man, 
we find illustrated, in words, examples, and results, 
in numerous instances in both the Old Testament 
and the New. The book of Psalms alone, with its 
many fitting echoes and responses to all our human 
feelings, contains a good number of these passages. 
In the Fifty-first Psalm, " I acknowledged my trans- 
gressions : and my sin is ever before me. Against 
thee, thee only, have I sinned." No confession to 
God's priest even then, when priests offered sacri- 
fices daily for the sins of the people ; his confes- 
sion is to God : " Against thee only have I sinned." 
Stronger still in the Thirty-second Psalm, " I ac- 
knowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity 
have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgres- 
sions unto the Lord ; and thou forgavest the iniquity 
of my sin." And so, if we pass from the Psalmist 
to his wiser son, " He that covereth his sins shall 
not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh 
them shall have mercy." 

The depth of the feeling with which we should 
confess our sins, the sense of wrong and guilt that 
should be upon us, we also find illustrated in the 
Psalms and Proverbs. "Innumerable evils have en- 
compassed me," says the Psalmist ; " mine iniquities 
have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to 



jo Living Words. 

look up ; they are more than the hairs of my head." 
And still later does Job after his affliction, when he 
had been brought to a thorough self-scrutiny, say, 
" Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer thee ? 
I will lay my hand upon my mouth." And that 
Psalm, the De Profwidis, which has been in all the 
ages of the Church the oracle of all that are sorrow- 
ing under pain and sin because of transgression, is 
an example of the true character of confession, contain- 
ing the consciousness of guilt and a desire for its re- 
moval, the consciousness of sin and a determination 
to avoid it. A finer example of the acknowledgment 
of guilt with humility cannot be found than that in 
Daniel, where, after his trial, he brings himself down 
before God, and says, " And I prayed unto the Lord 
my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, 
the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant 
and mercy to them that love him, and to them that 
keep his commandments ; we have sinned, and have 
committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and 
have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts 
and thy judgments : neither have we hearkened unto 
thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name 
to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all 
the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness be- 
longeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face." 
When we come to God confessing our sins, we are 
not to feel a sense of our sins only, but feel also 



The Way to Forgiveness. yi 

humbled on account of them ; putting our mouths in 
the dust, in the language of Job, before the great 
and terrible God we have offended. 

The next point is the purpose of amendment. 
The confession of our sins being comprehensive and 
complete, and made in deep humiliation, should also 
be made with the purpose of amendment. Augus- 
tine speaks of a covetous man confessing his covet- 
ousness, and almost in the same breath his mind is 
far off forging and devising some new plan of en- 
riching himself. Many of our confessions, it is to be 
feared, are of this sort. We come, intending to be 
sure to confess our sins, because that, we know, is 
the condition of pardon, but not with the purpose of 
amendment so clear and strong that it shall work 
itself out in final results. We often come confessing 
our offenses and, at the same time, thinking over the 
sin as a delicious thing, and waiting for the very 
next chance of repeating it. If our confession of 
sin be not accompanied with a genuine purpose of 
amendment and a hatred of sin, the confession might 
as well not be made. God does not demand, and 
will not receive, this lip confession. Joel told the 
Jews after their long transgressions, " Rend your 
heart, and not your garments ; and turn unto the 
Lord " " with all your heart, and with fasting, and with 
weeping, and with mourning." It should be accom- 
panied with prayer if it is to be such a confession as 



72 Livi?tg Words. 

the text speaks of and the Scriptures everywhere en- 
join. Two men came to pray, as we are told in the 
beautiful Gospel of St. Luke, and one of them, a 
man that, doubtless, had had a high place in the syna- 
gogue from his youth up, trained in all the peculiar 
learning of his class, a Pharisee, stood up before God, 
and thanked God that he was " not as other men are." 
The sacred record tells us that there was a publican 
that stood afar off, and all we know of his confession 
and prayer is, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 
That was the confession that he was a sinner, and 
the prayer accompanied it, " God be merciful to me." 
And the Scriptures tell us that that man went down 
to his house justified more than the other. 

We now come to consider the blessing promised to 
those who confess their transgressions. The first 
promise is that of forgiveness. Sin exists in us as 
guilt to be pardoned, and when we come to confess 
we feel this guilt, and pray that it may be removed. 
" God be merciful to me a sinner." And this par- 
don of sin is called justification. I shall not dwell 
upon the nature of justification ; it is the substance 
of the first four or five chapters of the Epistle to the 
Romans, which teach this doctrine, and show its na- 
ture and conditions. The whole of these four chap- 
ters are taken up with this one demonstration, that 
it is possible for a man to have his sins forgiven ; 
and everywhere throughout the Bible the aim of 






The Way to Forgiveness. 73 

the teaching is that man may be forgiven. In the 
forms and ceremonies of the law, in the sacrifices 
described in the book of Leviticus, when a man com- 
mitted a sin he should bring his lamb to the temple, 
or if he were poor, then his pigeons ; according to his 
purse, his offering. In the law, and ceremonies of 
the law, we find everywhere the same end sought 
for — the forgiveness of sins ; and when we come to 
God confessing, our constant prayer is, " Forgive us 
our sins." Christ puts this petition to our lips in 
the comprehensive prayer in which he gives the form 
of all our prayers, " Forgive us our trespasses, as we 
forgive them that trespass against us." Whoever 
comes confessing his sins, and forsaking them, shall 
find mercy. This mercy is forgiveness of sins. By 
confession the relation between the sinful man and 
God is altered, and now God's anger is turned away. 
Before there was — in the great book of doom, which 
God keeps for all classes, conditions, and genera- 
tions of mankind, and has kept from the beginning 
of the world until now — a catalogue of the sins com- 
mitted against Almighty God ; but these are now 
wiped out by forgiveness, and the relation between 
the sinner and God is changed from enmity to peace. 
Do you mean to say, it may be asked, that this is 
always possible, that every one who goes to God with 
the confession of sin upon his lips shall have his sins 
forgiven ? Unquestionably ; there is no possibility 



74 Living Words. 

of failure. There never has been a case from the 
beginning of Christianity until now, never a single 
case of an earnest, truthful sinner confessing his sins 
before Almighty God, with repentance and turning to 
Him, that was not followed by forgiveness. I say this 
in the strongest possible manner. It is the test of 
Christianity, because this is what it aims at, the very 
thing that Christ was given for, that our sins might 
be forgiven ; for this he hung upon the tree ; for 
this all that grand plan of redemption, which makes 
so large a portion of the picture of Christianity, 
was devised in the eternity of almighty wisdom , for 
this all Christ's sufferings were endured — that we 
might be forgiven. If Christianity fail in this it fails 
utterly in the very crisis of its trial. What good 
is it to us if it cannot give us this ? We are sinners 
and want to be saved ; and if we cannot have forgive- 
ness in the Christian way — by confession, and re- 
pentance, and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ — 
let us turn back again to that old religion by which 
many Pagans found comfort in bringing their sacri- 
fices to the temple, or let us abandon all thought of 
religion, and say to our souls, " Let us eat and drink, 
for to-morrow we die." It is not so. Christianity is 
not a failure. The poor, sin-sick soul is forgiven, 
shall be forgiven to the end of time. There came 
one to me this week with such words as these : " I 
have sinned too much. I have been a child of God, 



The Way to Forgiveness. 75 

but have wandered far away from him for years and 
years. I have left and forgotten him. I come with sor- 
row, but I fear there is no forgiveness for me." Ah, 
here is the place of the Christian minister, not to 
receive the confession, and be the medium of absolu- 
tion, but to tell such souls as that — whether you be 
sinners that never sought God's mercy at all, or, like 
this one, are backsliders, who have been living for 
years with the dogs and sorcerers of the earth, and, 
like the prodigal son, turn away from the husks, and 
long for your father's house — confess your sins before 
Almighty God, and you shall be forgiven. 

And so, again, the text promises not only forgive- 
ness, but cleansing from all unrighteousness. Sin 
exists in us not only as guilt to be pardoned, but 
also as unholiness to be removed. If we confess 
our sins before Almighty God not only shall we be 
forgiven, but the disposition to sin shall be removed. 
Sanctification is promised to us as well as justifica- 
tion. We shall be cleansed ; not cleansed partially, 
not from this, that, or the other evil tendency, but 
cleansed from all unrighteousness. If there be any 
text in the whole Bible that declares the doctrine of 
Christian purity this does it. God will cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness. It may be asked, "Do 
you mean to say that you believe in the doctrine of 
the perfectibility of human nature ? " I do not be- 
lieve in any such doctrine ; and this is the way many 



j6 Living Words. 

people object to the doctrine of sanctiflcation and 
Christian perfection as it is taught in the Church. 
There has been this mystic dream of perfectibility- 
prevailing among a certain class of men, in Pagan 
and Christian times, in all ages ; but that is a very 
different thing from the Christian doctrine of sancti- 
flcation. This does not imply that human nature 
is or can be perfect. It simply implies this, that 
the work of salvation, which Christianity proposes 
to accomplish, may be a complete one ; that if 
Christ Jesus died to take away our sins, the effect 
of his death may be the taking away of the 
sins of the individual ; that the whole effect of 
Christ's redemption can never be wrought out until 
this is wrought out — the entire diffusion of holiness 
among men. Sanctification is the moral aspect of 
Christianity ; and so far forth as we set up ideas of 
the possibilities of Christianity, we are sure ourselves 
to fall in with the standard we have set up ; and if 
we have, by any accident or mode of thinking, come 
to the conclusion that, after all, if we only do toler- 
ably well in life, and only accomplish the ends of life 
fairly, there is nothing to fear, we have forgotten the 
model of life set before us in the New Testament. 
The Lord Jesus is our model, and we are told to 
imitate him ; nay, more, in our text the injunction is 
put in language so broad and strong that one shrinks 
from the thought of its being an injunction. We are 



The Way to Forgiveness. fj 

told by Christ himself, " Be ye perfect." How ? As 
John the Baptist was perfect ? No. As the Apos- 
tle John was perfect ? No such comparison as that. 
As Jesus Christ, the God-man, was perfect ? Not 
even that ; but still stronger. " Be ye perfect even 
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Do 
not lower the Christian ideal ; but, for your own 
sake, keep it up as high as you can. However you 
have fallen below it in your own case, or however 
you may see those around fall below it, keep that 
pure. Though your conduct soil your hands, keep 
your thought pure — the image of a pure Christian 
life, and pray to God that you may come near to 
that ideal. Come, confessing your sins humbly, 
and you will find that when you seek him he will 
be found of you, and cleanse you from all un- 
righteousness. 

Lastly, we come to the pledge that the promises 
shall be fulfilled. This pledge is the faithfulness and 
justice of God, and that is a security that cannot 
fail. Heaven and earth may pass away, but God's 
word shall not pass away. In the chapter which I 
read in the lesson of this morning it is said, " If we 
say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned 
we make God a liar." That is one way to make God 
a liar ; we can make God a liar in another way, by 
distrusting his willingness to perform his own prom- 



7$ Living Words. 

ises. If we say he will not cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness we make him a liar in the one case as 
much as in the other, because his faithfulness has 
been pledged, his justice has been pledged. His 
justice, say you ? this can have nothing to do with 
forgiveness and cleansing ; justice is to pursue us and 
take vengeance upon our transgression. Yet the 
justice of God is pledged for the forgiveness of the 
sinner. "He is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins." Some theologians hold to the idea, that be- 
cause God's grace is exercised in forgiving us there 
is no justice ; when the great tragedy of Calvary it- 
self was only an exhibition of divine justice, and 
Jesus hung on the cross, an example of God's jus- 
tice greater even than the everlasting hell prepared 
for the punishment of the ungodly ; for there on him 
was wreaked all the divine justice, on him were 
heaped all the sins of all mankind ! The great sea, 
wave after wave, of man's iniquity poured upon him, 
overwhelming him, and all this to illustrate the jus- 
tice of God — and this justice of God exhibited on 
Calvary is pledged to save the world. 

John says in this very chapter, the seventh verse, 
" The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from 
all sin." " He is the propitiation for our sins : and 
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world." God is pledged by the death of his Son, by 
every tear of anguish which he shed, by all the bloody 



The Way to Forgiveness. 79 

sweat that flowed from him in the hour of his agony, 
by that bitter hour when he was forsaken on the 
cross, and cried out " it is finished," and gave up the 
Ghost, by all that Christ endured to atone for the 
sins of men, God's justice is pledged for your salva- 
tion and mine ! He has even sworn that he will 
be merciful, as we read in the Epistle to the He- 
brews : " God, willing more abundantly to show unto 
the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, 
confirmed it by an oath : that by two immutable 
things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we 
might have a strong consolation, who have fled for 
refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us : which 
hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and 
steadfast." 

And now, brethren, here is a pledge : God is faith- 
ful and just, and forgives us our sins, and cleanses 
us from all unrighteousness ; pledged by His own 
character ; pledged by the offering of His Son on 
Calvary ; pledged by His oath. Oh, the glory of those 
blessings ! Oh, the sanctity of this pledge ! Oh, the 
simplicity of the condition on which it is offered ! 
The blessings are pardon and sanctification ; the 
pledge is the faithfulness and justice of God ; the 
condition, the simple condition of confession and re- 
pentance. How simple, yet how comprehensive, is 
this great scheme. How is it with you, Christian 
man, in your Christian life ? Have you made ad- 



80 Living Words. 

vancement ? have you come near to that degree of 
Christian experience in which you can speak of being 
free from sin ? do you walk in the fellowship of 
Jesus Christ, whose blood has made you free from 
sin ? do you feel that you have been cleansed from 
all unrighteousness ? No, you answer. Some of you 
may answer differently, but most of you will answer, 
I have not come to that point of Christian experi- 
ence. Have you sinned since your conversion ? 
Unquestionably I have, and I am sinning all the 
time. Is it best to keep on in this way ? is this the 
true way of the Christian life ? Have you never 
thought, " if this be the whole of it, for me, at least, 
there has been a great deal of failure in it ? " There 
are two feelings dispiriting you — that you are still 
sinful, that you are still unholy — the one and the 
other alike putting aside as impossible the higher 
side of Christian life. Look up ! It is a great thing 
for you that your sins have been forgiven, and that 
you have been kept in the Christian way of life ; that 
you have shrunk from sin, and, when you did sin, 
asked for forgiveness. Yet look to it that you fall 
not again. Sin and confession, alternating, form a 
wheel, upon which some sinners are circled and 
turned about until they fall to the ground ! 

" That we walk in the light," says the context, " as 
He is the light." The more you walk in the light, 
the more you will be likely to see your sins and con- 



The Way to Forgiveness. 81 

fess them ; the more you walk in the twilight, the 
more dim and distant will they seem. One of the old 
fathers says we are very apt, in looking on our own 
sins, to look through painted glass, painted by the 
spirit of this world, and through that medium we see 
all our sins in some strange light, that takes away 
their hideousness and nlthiness. But, in looking at 
the faults of others we generally use pure white glass, 
or even magnifying glass. Having confessed your 
own sins, you fall into this fault of looking into other 
people's sins. Some people are so pious that they 
have nothing to do but mind their neighbors' vices 
and follies. You will never atone for your own cov- 
etousness by talking of your neighbors' pride. You 
say you are a poor man, you cannot associate with 
such and such people, they are too* proud. How do 
you know about their being proud ? Is it because 
they live better than you do ? Then, for the same 
reason, you must yourself be proud, for there is 
many a dweller in the Five Points that has just as 
much right to lay at your door the same accusation. 
If you are a rich man, you cannot cover up your own 
pride and say, " He is ungrateful ; I helped him this 
way and that, and he is ungrateful." Let other peo- 
ple's sins alone. 

Come nearer to the text, and take it in all its 
bearings. Confess all your sins ; confess, most of 

all, that you had so little heart for God, and had 

6 



82 Living Words, 

the world so much at heart, and its interests of 
getting and spending. Confess your sins earnestly, 
faithfully, before Him, relying ou his never-broken 
pledge, remembering that His oath is registered 
that you shall be forgiven, and cleansed from all 
unrighteousness, 



The Christian Life a Growth. 83 



v. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A GROWTH. 

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. — 2 Peter Hi, 18. 



This text sets forth the Christian life under the ele- 
ments of the grace of Christ and the knowledge of 
Christ. It sets forth, also, the law of the develop- 
ment of the Christian life : that it is the law of 
growth ; that we are to grow in the grace and in the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
To these two points, and to the practical application 
of them, in ascertaining the tests of Christian growth, 
I shall invite your attention to-day. 

The first point, then, is the view of the Christian 
life that is here presented under the two elements of 
the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. One of these is Christ's work of love 
in us, and the fruits which it produces ; that is, the 
grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The 
other is the answer of our intellectual and moral na- 
ture to this gift on the part of Christ, our devotion 
to him in mind, in heart, and in feelings ; for all this 
is included in the term " the knowledge of our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 



84 Living Words. 

The word " grace" is used one hundred and twenty- 
eight times in the Bible, and one hundred and fifteen 
times in the sense of the favor of God. In the other 
passages, it is used to denote something growing out 
of the favor or kindness of God ; and this idea is at 
the root of the notion of grace in all these remaining 
places. We speak of a state of grace, and we have 
authority for this in this text and in the apostolic 
benediction, " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," 
and by that we mean that a person is in the favor of 
God in virtue of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the possession 
of those personal and individual virtues that are 
essential in order to gain the favor of God. So that 
to be in a state of grace implies such a relation to 
the Lord Jesus as to have partaken of the benefits 
of his death and resurrection, to be living before 
him in a state of justification and enjoying his 
favor. It is not necessary, then, to dwell more par- 
ticularly upon this. The gift of Christ's grace to us 
is the gift of his life for our example, his death for 
our redemption, his resurrection for our justification, 
his spirit for our sanctification ; and, to be in a state 
of grace, is to have appropriated these blessings to 
ourselves, continuing that act of appropriation in 
such a way as to be in living connection with the Lord 
Jesus as our Redeemer and Saviour. 

A mere outward knowledge of Christianity is, in 



The Christian Life a Growth, 85 

itself, an invaluable thing. Sometimes we talk in a 
way as if it were not ; but, although we may speak of 
an outward and intellectual knowledge as being of 
itself a thing that cannot save a man, it is invaluable 
in relation to our personal culture, and the building 
up of that higher life of which it is but the scaffold- 
ing. It is in this outward knowledge that a Christian 
land differs from a Pagan land, in having the knowl- 
edge of Christ diffused through it, and its atmosphere 
permeated by it. And so, in fact, when we come to 
speak of that last grand day when God shall reign 
upon the earth, that day which we sometimes call the 
day of millennial glory — that day which shall be the 
final civilization of all mankind is spoken of as the 
day when knowledge shall be increased, when no 
man shall ask his fellow, " Knowest thou the 
Lord ? " but all shall know him, from the lowest to 
the greatest. It is, therefore, a great thing to know 
the Lord Jesus Christ even in an outward way. It 
is but the scaffolding by which we erect a Christian 
life, the shell by which it is preserved ; but, at the 
same time, without the shell we could not preserve 
the kernel, without the scaffolding we could never 
erect the building, without the atmosphere we could 
not breathe. And so let us bless God that we have 
had our birth and education in an enlightened and 
Christian land ; that from our infancy we have 
been learning those words which are the vehicles 



86 Living Words. 

of Christian instruction, those songs which are the 
breathings of the soul's aspiration to a knowledge 
and a hope of a higher sphere ; that we have this 
blessed Book, which contains in itself the elements 
of all knowledge in this life, and all knowledge of 
the life to come. 

The knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and his 
grace are closely allied. In his Second Epistle 
Peter says, " Grace and peace be multiplied unto 
you." How ? " Through the knowledge of God, 
and of Jesus our Lord." Here, then, this very 
Apostle, from whose words I am preaching to you 
this morning, sets forth the knowledge of God and 
of Jesus Christ as the means of grace ; the very 
means of preserving and growing in that state of 
grace. I will quote one or two pregnant passages, 
of the dozens of similar ones scattered throughout 
the Scriptures, bearing upon this point of knowledge 
in relation to virtue and godliness. What is it that 
Paul tells us in the beautiful Epistle to the Philip- 
pians, in which he unfolds his inner life so entirely 
and tenderly to those who were the best of all the 
Christians to whom he ever wrote, and to whom 
he most freely poured out his experience — what was 
his longing and prayer ? " Yea, doubtless, and I 
count all things but loss — " but what ? A bright 
state of religious experience ? He means that. A 
near and close relationship to God ? He means that 



The Christian Life a Growth. 8/ 

too. A sure hope of immortality and eternal joy? 
He means that. " Yea, doubtless, and I count all 
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus my Lord." And now follow me a lit- 
tle further, and see how he develops the excellency of 
this knowledge, and what he makes of it. " That I 
may know him " — that is, the foundation and beginning 
upon which all our knowledge must rest — " and the 
power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his 
suffering, being made conformable unto his death." 
Here, then, we have the elements of this true Chris- 
tian knowledge. " Know that this is life eternal, the 
knowledge of the true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent," to have our souls penetrated through 
and through with that beautiful life of his, which is 
set forth for us as a model for our own human life in 
its very best development ; for what can we aim at in 
this life, in the very highest degree of Christian ex- 
perience, but that our lives should be a copy of his ? 
In him, in his example, and in the power of his res- 
urrection, to get that which his resurrection pur- 
chased for us — our individual justification, and free- 
dom from the power of death and its dominion — our 
individual title to rise again, we have an assurance 
that we are in Christ, and with him we shall live ; that, 
like his dead body, we too shall rise again, and that 
for us there is an assurance of everlasting life here- 
after. All this is implied in the knowledge of Christ 



88 Living Words. 

and the power of his resurrection. Oh, brethren, 
to get a knowledge of Christ, which shall be every- 
day a stepping-stone to some new degree of Chris- 
tian experience, we must live in the shadow of his 
grace, contemplate his suffering until we are indeed 
in fellowship with him, dwell upon his agony ten- 
derly and lovingly, sympathizingly and earnestly, 
until we take them into our habit of thinking and 
feeling, and are ready to imitate his death and suffer- 
ing if need be. Oh this fellowship in the suffering of 
Christ, how much is implied in it ! And until we 
get all this we have no true and intimate knowledge 
of Christ at all. And when we do get it, we should 
be free from all self-indulgence, all the common 
ideas of life as founded upon personal and individual 
aggrandizement. 

The whole of it is summed up in the first chapter 
of the Epistle to the Ephesians by St. Paul in these 
words : " That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of 
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him : the 
eyes of your understanding being enlightened ; that 
ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and 
what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the 
saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his 
power to us-ward who believe, according to the 
working of his mighty power, which he wrought in 
Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set 



The Christian Life a Growth. 89 

him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." 
The knowledge of Christ, then, is to know " the ex- 
ceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who be- 
lieve." Who is there among us that knows this 
power, that has ever felt it ? Sometimes, when we 
have thrown our hearts out. and up to God with a 
thorough, vital, and absolute faith in Christ, in a sin- 
gle instant of our entire being we may have felt it. 
Glimpses we may have had of the celestial glory, of 
the momentary manifestation of that electric fire and 
power which he can shed to us-ward when we be- 
lieve. But who dwells constantly in the knowledge 
of that power ? Brethren, we have only dreamed of 
it now and then ; perhaps we have felt a single 
touch of it, and then the connection has been let 
go — the vital bond of faith, which is the conductor 
of that celestial fire, we have let go — and going out 
into the world, and letting the world lay waste our 
powers, we have lost the knowledge of the Saviour, 
the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of 
his suffering. 

Let us look at the second point which the text 
presents before us, and see how we are to guard 
against these separations from Christ : " Grow in 
grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." Growth is the law of development of the 
Christian life. The same idea is exhibited with great 
variety of expression in the Scriptures. In the Phi- 



90 Living Words. 

lippians, for example, Paul says : " Brethren, I count 
not myself to have apprehended : but this one thing 
I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I 
press toward the mark for the prize of the high call- 
ing of God in Christ Jesus." 

There is great beauty and aptness in the figure 
of growth as applicable to the Christian life. Take 
it with reference to the growth of a plant or a child. 
From the seed the plant shoots into the outward 
air, and, having in it an inward principle of life, it 
requires certain outward conditions for its growth. 
And from the humblest flower that grows, to the 
highest organized human body, that inward principle 
of life is an entire mystery. Among all the results 
of modern physical science there has been no ap- 
proximation to a comprehension or explanation of 
the mystery of life in a plant or an animal. We call 
it life. There is a vital principle, it must be admit- 
ted, which controls us. The chemistry of the human 
body is controlled by what we call physiological and 
chemical laws, but the vital principle coming into 
contact with them upsets them. If we were to at- 
tempt to follow the laws of chemistry, which we 
learn from analysis, without making allowance for 
the operation of the vital force to regulate or control 
the principle of life, we should fall into the most ab- 
surd results in medical practice or in the conduct oi 



The Christian Life a Growth. 91 

life itself. This inward life is a mystery ; its out- 
ward condition is the law of growth. The plant re- 
quires for its development soil, air, warmth, moisture, 
and sunlight, and then this law of its nature will be 
impressed upon it. The acorn, if planted, will take 
upon itself, as it grows up, the characteristics of the 
oak that it is to be, and so of any other plant. So, 
too, of the human body. The child is born and 
comes into an outward atmosphere suited for it, and 
by light and warmth, food and air, its tissues grow 
harmoniously together, every part of them in its 
proper adjustment to every other — muscles and ten- 
dons, flesh and bone, each growing in a proper ratio 
to each other according to their common life, by 
partaking of the outward elements adapted to the 
nourishment of the organism. Then as the child 
goes on, it requires, in addition to air, food and 
warmth, exercise in order to develop the muscles, and 
give the frame compactness and vigor, without which 
the child would be puny and imperfect. Without 
light, warmth, food, and exercise, or by the with- 
holding of any one of them, you may have a growth, 
but an imperfect growth. Withhold all light, for ex- 
ample. The child will be a delicate child. Reared 
in the dark, it will be pale as a flower grown in a 
cave. It may even grow rapidly, but it will become 
debilitated, and by and by it will decay and die ; 
and so with the other elements of growth — withhold 



92 Living Words. 

more of them, and the result will be still worse, and 
you may get by and by a misshapen, hideous mon- 
ster, painful to look upon. 

Let us look at this, and apply it to the Christian 
life. Corresponding to the birth of the child, is the 
regeneration of the soul. Christ's own figure is the 
new birth in the inner life, and that new birth takes 
place in virtue of a mysterious- principle of life, in- 
spired by the Holy Ghost, purchased by Jesus 
Christ, and given to us by him for the regeneration 
of the soul in the beginning of this inner life, and 
afterward in its growth and development. Many 
people object to vital Christianity on this account. 
" You speak of a vital connection with Christ. I 
cannot understand it ; it is mystical." It is no more 
mystical than the vital principle in your own organi- 
zation, in the blade of grass before your door, or 
the oak-tree that overshadows your house. If there 
were no mystery there would be no life, for life itself 
is an immense mystery. We have not understood 
it yet, and we cannot, until we pass those crystal 
doors that shall admit us into the home of life. 
This is only the vestibule, and we know not the 
secrets of the inner palace. The inner life is the life 
of God in the soul, and this must be preserved and 
perpetuated in the soul in order that there shall be 
any growth at all in grace and knowledge. It is not 
possible for us to grow without this inner life any 



The Christian Life a Growth. 93 

more than it is possible for the child to grow if the 
vital force is withdrawn. 

Then come the outward conditions, the use of the 
means. The very atmosphere is a great thing for 
the growth of the soul. Indeed, you will observe 
that we come upon certain analogies that I did not 
allude to before. We have a great control over 
these elements ourselves. We can to a certain ex- 
tent command the atmosphere in which we live. In 
some of the wards of this city, such as the fifteenth, 
the annual rate of mortality is one in sixty-two, 
while in others it is one in twenty-seven. What is 
the reason ? Because in the former we find well- 
ventilated dwellings, the atmosphere is adapted to 
the human organism, the lungs play freely. In the 
other case the air is poisoned, and breathed over 
and over again until, charged with deadly quantities 
of carbonic acid, the lungs become diseased, and 
every ^breath which ought to be a breath of life is a 
breath of death. Just so with the life of the soul. 
You can command for yourselves the outward en- 
vironment, can choose your own company, books, 
and newspapers ; and you and your children may 
have your associations among God's children, or 
choose for your friends men that despise the Sav- 
iour ; may read books that will cultivate your minds, 
refine the heart, enlarge the intellect, and expand 
the moral powers ; or spend your time in reading 



94 Living Words. 

vile novels or bad and corrupting books. All this 
is making the atmosphere in which your soul lives 
and grows. There is a great deal in this for the 
consideration of each of us, remembering that the 
vital power of Christianity depends for its develop- 
ment within us on the conditions which we our- 
selves, to a very great extent, have control over. 

Then the exercise we take is essential to a thor- 
ough and healthful growth. We call the exercises 
means of grace, and among these exercises are 
household piety and prayer, class-meeting and 
prayer-meeting, and listening to the word of God (as 
a means of grace, and not merely for intellectual cul- 
ture ;) the use of the sacrament of the Lord's Sup- 
per, and Christian charity — doing good deeds, giving 
gifts, visiting the sick — and so we may build up the 
muscle and sinew and nerve of our immortal souls. 
Many of us seem to think of our souls as if they 
could go on and flourish, and get a natural and sub- 
stantial growth, without much exercise in the wor- 
ship of God, in family and private prayers, and 
without any exercise in Christian benevolence, think- 
ing all the time that because we have had a certain 
initial impulse in Christian life we are safe, and that 
our souls are growing in grace and in the love of 
God. Ah, what a fearful error ! 

The physical organization of the plant cannot do 
without light, and so it is again in the Christian 



The Christian Life a Growth. 95 

life. Light is essential to the healthful growth of 
the soul just as it is to the healthful growth of the 
body. Christianity is free from every thing like su- 
perstition. The New Testament is free from senti- 
mental and mawkish religion, from every thing that 
will not bear the test of scrutiny. It is sensible re- 
ligion all the way through. It comes to the light, 
and asks that the light may be thrown upon it. It 
cannot and will not live in the darkness. The fiercest 
accusation Christ brought against the world was that 
the world loved darkness rather than light because 
its ways were evil. We must have light, and where 
shall we seek it ? This Book is the sun of the whole 
moral world, this is the source of all light upon mor- 
als, upon the conduct of this life, and of all light 
upon the hope of the future. How is it with us and 
the word of God ? We cannot grow in the knowl- 
edge and love of Jesus Christ unless we are Bible 
students, and seeking daily for new treasures of wis- 
dom and knowledge. 

The agencies of growth are innumerable on every 
side of us. God has scattered them, and it is only 
for us to take them up and make use of them. Na- 
ture, that environs us on every hand ; the history 
and experience of mankind, as well as the word of 
God — all these agencies are lying about us to be 
used for the growth of our minds, the develop- 
ment of our hearts, and the enlargement of the 



g6 Living Words 

Christian life within us, if we will but make use of 
them. 

But what we shall grow to be depends upon 
our power of assimilation, and the power of as- 
similation depends upon the nature, strength, and 
degree of the inner life within us. Put two plants 
side by side, one of them the violet, and the other 
the nightshade — which produces a very beautiful 
flower — they have the same soil, and about them the 
same sunshine and genial showers. One of them, 
according to the law of its nature, derives from these 
elements beauty and fragrance, gathers from air and 
soil and sunshine the lovely qualities of the violet. 
The other has gathered from the very same ele- 
ments the sources of poison and death. So it is, 
brethren, with us in relation to all the elements of 
growth that are about us. If the vital force that 
is within us is the Christian life, then from all the 
lessons of nature, as we go out to look upon it, from 
all the voices of earth, and air, and sea, from the har- 
monies of the celestial spheres, and all the utterances 
by which God speaks in this grand temple which he 
has built for his worship and our culture, we are 
gathering new Christian powers, new elements of 
godliness. On the other hand, if the life that is 
within us is a worldly, selfish, or devilish life, we 
may have intellectual forces, and assimilate by them, 
and gather power for evil, strength to secrete poison : 



The Christian Life a Growth. 97 

poison that shall eat our own life out, at the same 
time that it diffuses miasma and death in society 
about us. Let us see that the light that is within us 
be not darkness. 

Further, this law of growth is imperative in the 
Christian life ; it is this or nothing ; it is grow or 
decay. One or the other you must do. The poets 
tell us of a fire-fly in southern climates, said to be 
the most brilliant of all fire-flies, which has this pe- 
culiarity, that it never shines at all except when 
going rapidly upon the wing, and then its brilliancy 
can be seen afar. So it is with our immortal souls. 
When we are upon the wing, active and advancing, 
going forward in the Christian race toward God and 
toward heaven, our light shines out and all men see 
it ; but when we stand still it dies. Our soul itself 
is full of the instinct of advancement and progres- 
sion. Wherefore, is it but that this law may be 
illustrated, that there "burns in mortal bosoms this 
unquenched hope that breathes from day to day sub- 
limer things, and mocks possession" of the things 
we have ? That we may be every day going on to 
perfection ! This is the law of the Christian life 
within us. 

I have used this word "perfection," and used it 
purposely, because it is the word of God and of the 
Scripture. Perfection in the Christian life is not in- 
consistent with growth. There is no discrepancy 

7 



98 Living Words. 

between the law of growth here set forth and the 
injunction, " Be ye perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." How is it with the 
physical organization ? Take the child ten years old, 
ruddy and fresh-skinned, the blood coming to the 
surface with an active circulation showing that the 
heart is vigorous, with changing play of countenance 
and complexion, eye clear and lustrous, and all the 
movements lithe and nimble and active, and you 
say, that is a perfect organization ; there is nothing 
wanting ; all the way through it is perfect. Here is 
another child, pining and sickly, and you say there is 
some imperfection in the organization, some morbid 
agencies are at work. Just so it is in the Christian 
life. Let all who are born again into the kingdom 
of the Lord Jesus Christ only give themselves 
wholly to God, consecrate themselves absolutely to 
his service, say to the world, " Thou shalt not mas- 
ter me, but in God's name I will master thee, and 
use thee for my spiritual growth ! " This is what 
the Bible means when it says, "Be ye perfect," — 
absolute consecration to God's service, thorough 
dedication to him of heart and mind and life. Is 
there any thing inconsistent with growth in this ? 
Not at all. Take a man who has been for twenty- 
five years living in this absolute devotion to the serv- 
ice of God, will he not profit by every opportunity, 
assimilating all the elements of growth and strength 



The Christian Life a Growth. 99 

about him for his own personal growth within ? If 
his religious habits were sickly, feeble, and half- 
formed he could not use these opportunities. How 
few there are in full possession of muscular and nerv- 
ous vigor ! And why ? Because the world has gone 
very far astray from the original intention of its 
Maker. God meant that those who live this human 
life should be — every man and woman — perfect in 
mental and physical organization. Sin has brought 
this corruption, and made these pale faces, these 
quivering and tremulous organizations ; in which 
nerves which ought to be the sources of life and 
vigor are only messengers of pain and anguish. It 
is sin that has done all this. So it is in the moral 
world. How few people we see of perfect moral or- 
ganization, illustrating the beautiful example of 
Christ, and showing it among men ! In his Epistle 
to the Ephesians, Paul prays for the people thus : 
"That he would grant you, according to the riches 
of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his 
Spirit in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in 
your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted and 
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with 
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, 
and height ; and to know the love of Christ, which 
passeth knowledge" — this might seem a paradox, but 
it is not — "that ye might be filled with all the fullness 
of God." Paul prayed that for the Ephesians. O, 



100 Living Words. 

my brethren, I pray for myself and you, that we may 
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge ; 
that we may be filled with all the fullness of God ; 
and that, under the inspiration of this knowledge, 
under the power of this fullness of divine love, we 
may be vigorous Christians, living for our faith, and, 
if need be, ready to die for it ; growing in the 
knowledge and love of Christ. 

There are tests by which to ascertain this growth. 
How is it with you ? You have been for five years, 
ten or twenty, I do not know how many years, a 
member of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Have you received the Holy Ghost ? Are you a 
better Christian now than you were at first ? better 
able to resist temptation ? Have you less love of the 
world, less selfishness and avarice ? Are you more 
charitable, liberal, and Christ-like ? Ah ! as we get 
on in life and increase in goods and comforts, how 
apt we are to grow selfish ! I knew a man some 
years ago, a Sunday-school teacher, working with his 
own hands for his bread, but full of all Christian 
activities. Go to him for any Christian charity, for 
something for the wider diffusion of the word of 
God, for the cause of missions, or for any of those 
great agencies which are transforming the face of 
this wilderness world of ours, and that man from 
his daily labor always had his gift ready. He is 
very rich now, has increased his goods, and lives in 



The Christian Life a Growth. ioi 

a grand house, and keeps a carriage, and horses, and 
servants, and plate ; go to him now and he will give 
you perhaps a little more than when he was a jour- 
neyman, and perhaps not even that. Ah ! what a 
sad, sad thing it is ! I remember a lad with whom I 
went to school. We often took sweet counsel to- 
gether. He was a boy who promised well ; was free 
from all the evil tendencies of youth. Now he is a 
millionaire, and I have turned to see what he is 
doing for the advancement of God's kingdom among 
men, and to see that he lives not altogether for him- 
self, but have turned in vain. The millionaire I 
know, the man I cannot find ; the very soul is gone 
out of him. Now, brethren, test yourselves by such 
examples as these. Do you find that you are grow- 
ing in Christian charity and love, and are more will- 
ing to make sacrifices in the cause of Almighty God 
than you were some years ago ? Then you are grow- 
ing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. 
Take a sure test. Do you pray ?— - really, earnestly 
pray ? Do you find access to Christ in prayer, and 
that your soul grows in prayer ? Do you rise — to 
use a very beautiful figure of Jeremy Taylor — do you 
rise, as you may sometimes see the lark— the En- 
glish sky-lark — rising from his bed of grass, and 
ascending, ascending, and singing the louder and 
sweeter and stronger as he rises— upward and up- 
ward, as you get nearer to the throne, richer in gifts 



102 Living Words. 

and in power ? Then are you growing in this divine 
grace and knowledge. 

But perhaps, tried by these tests, you are wanting 
in that fullness of power, in that Christian perfection, 
to which you should have attained. Alas ! you can- 
not say that God's grace has not been given to you ! 
Let us watch and pray that the opportunities He 
has still in store for us may not be afforded in vain. 



The Open Door— At Home. 103 



VI. 



THE OPEN DOOR-AT HOME. 

But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door 
and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries. — 
1 Cor. xvi, 8, 9. 



This portion of the Epistle was written from Eph- 
esus at the time of the events stated in the 19th 
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. " I will tarry 
at Ephesus." What were his inducements to tarry ? 
A wide sphere of usefulness, and a powerful opposi- 
tion ; these were his inducements. Not precisely 
the inducements that govern mankind in general ; 
perhaps not precisely the inducements that always 
govern Christian ministers and Christian people. 

Let us see whether we can gather from this nar- 
rative in the Acts, and from this declaration of St. 
Paul in reference to the circumstances that then en- 
vironed him, lessons for our own instruction, and 
for our own guidance in our relations to the Chris- 
tian Church and the advancement of the work of 
God. 

You will find three points in the text which come 
naturally out of it. In St. Paul's case there was a 



104 Living Words. 

great and effectual door opened ; this is one point. 
There were many adversaries ; that is another point. 
Thirdly, he determined upon a certain line of con- 
duct in consequence : " I will tarry until Pentecost." 
These three points will afford us the practical les- 
sons that we seek this morning. The opening of a 
great and effectual door : this might be taken as to 
the wants of mankind about us, in the community. 
In the city of New York, for instance, there is al- 
ways a great door open for doing good. It might 
be taken as to the wants of the world at large, the 
missionary fields and openings, which are, at this 
time especially, greater than they have ever been be- 
fore in the history of the Christian Church. But I 
shall not dwell tipon these points to-day ; they will 
find their appropriate treatment in connection with 
our missionary sermons when they come to be 
preached. Let us take the text with reference to 
the ordinary work of the Church. There is always 
a door open in the Christian Church for gathering in 
sinners, and preaching the Gospel of Christ. It is 
sometimes more widely open than at others ; greater 
and more effectual. The Church of Christ has at 
this time a right to say as St. Paul said — and per- 
haps never had a greater right to say it than she 
has to-day — that a great and effectual door is open 
for the preaching of the Gospel. To apply the text 
specially to our own case, however, to our immediate 



The Open Door — At Home. 105 

congregation, our own wants and duties, is perhaps 
the best thing for us this morning. 

There is a degree of attention paid to religious 
things unknown some years ago ; an open ear on 
the part of multitudes of mankind to listen to God's 
truth, where nothing but dullness or obstinate re- 
sistance existed in past years ; an evidence that 
the Holy Spirit is at work largely on the minds of 
men in this generation ; that the Church is upon 
the eve of great events, nay, that great events have 
already come upon the Church ; that her steps are 
to be more rapid than they have been heretofore ; 
that the movement of the Church, which is always 
as the tread of a giant upon the earth, is hereafter to 
be a grander movement than it has ever been before 
— these are forebodings common to the Christian 
mind. It is for us to say how far we as a Church — 
the Christian body which meets here Sunday after 
Sunday under circumstances as favorable for the de- 
velopment of a Christian life and for the enlargement 
of the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ within a cer- 
tain sphere as were ever enjoyed by any body of 
Christian men and women since the day of Pente- 
cost — how far we share this genial influence, how far 
we recognize the opening of the door, and how far, 
when open, we are ready to step in and do the work 
which God puts upon us. What symptoms have we 
of the opening of a door for us as a congregation ? 



106 Living Words. 

I see it in this large and patient congregation ; in 
the multitudes that gather here Sunday after Sun- 
day, willing to listen to the word of God, or listening 
whether they will or not ; with their ears open to 
the preacher's words ; with their hearts — uncon- 
sciously it may be — tenderer than they have been 
for years ; with their minds in a state of greater 
readiness to receive the word of God, and the argu- 
ments upon which Christianity rests her proofs ; with 
their minds more inclined to accept the truth. In all 
these outward indications we have the signs of the 
opening of a great and effectual door ; and whenever 
this is the case in any Church, it is for the minister 
and people of that Church to recognize these signs 
and to act upon them. 

Another sign is when not merely the ordinary con- 
gregations worshipping are large and attentive and 
willing to be taught, but especially when those that 
are members of the Church itself, its regular com- 
municants, are quickened in their religious life ; 
when there are signs that those who are in the pres- 
ence of the Lord Jesus are endeavoring to get nearer 
and nearer to his cross ; that those who enjoy the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost are praying and looking 
daily and hourly for a larger and richer affluence of 
the spirit ; these too are signs that the work of God 
is coming upon a Church. Are these signs here ? 
To a very large extent. If the condition of individ- 



The Open Door — At Home. 107 

ual members of this Church be compared with what 
it was a while ago, they will be found to have a 
greater religious earnestness, a closer conscientious- 
ness, a more intimate and earnest self-scrutiny as to 
what the law of God is, what the call of duty is, what 
the scope and breadth of religious experience is, 
what the need of the individual soul is ; in all this 
there is a vast improvement in the condition of the 
members of this Church. At all events, it seems to 
me that I can see and feel, by that sort of myste- 
rious magnetism which is the richest bond between 
man and man, and certainly the richest bond be- 
tween the pastor and the flock — that I can see and 
feel the movement of this holy spirit between you 
and me : I can feel that we are getting gradually to 
take noble views of the Christian work of the Gos- 
pel which is intrusted to us ; that our Saviour, the 
blessed Jesus whom we follow, is exalted before our 
minds more and more ; that we are getting more 
and more to look upon the cross as the great centre, 
to which all pure affections should tend ; and in this 
gradual expansion of our minds, in this enlargement 
of our views, in this development of our best affec- 
tions, in these aspirations of our nobler nature, we 
are admitting the Holy Ghost to work within us. 

That there are multitudes of sinners here to be 
converted — many of them willing to be converted, 
whom the Holy Spirit has touched ; many sitting in 



108 Living Words. 

these seats, here, and there, and yonder, that are 
seeking to know the Son of God ; many again that 
have been backsliders, and are seeking to be re- 
claimed ; many who sit in silence, and are in secret 
longing for a better life than they have led — I have 
no doubt whatever. O, brethren, the door is open 
here, a great door and effectual, for you and me to 
do our work of evangelism ! 

We now come to the second point : the adver- 
saries in the way of the work of God. And, breth- 
ren, we must look for these adversaries not in the 
will of God, or the arrangements of God's provi- 
dence. Sometimes we are disposed to excuse our 
own indolence and indifference to the advancement 
of the cause of Christ by saying that the Holy Spirit 
is not operating, that the will of God does not seem 
to be that his work should spread and his name be 
glorified. There is no time when it is true that 
God's will is, that the car of Christ's progress should 
be arrested or delayed. God wills the universal dif- 
fusion of his truth. His own declaration is, that he 
is not willing that any should perish, but rather that 
all should come unto him and live. When difficul- 
ties are raised, and objections made of the want of 
adaptability of the Gospel to the needs of mankind, 
you will observe, if you have read the history of 
the Church, or studied the subject in your own ex- 
perience, that men complain most of the want of 



The Open Door — At Home, 109 

adaptation on the part of Christianity when they 
have least sense of religion themselves ; and when 
the Church is doing the least possible in the ad- 
vancement of the kingdom of Christ, and its mem- 
bers are indulging themselves in selfishness, in every 
form in which it can manifest itself; when the lust 
of worldly pleasures, the lust of the eye and the pride 
of life, absorb the souls that ought to be all alive to 
God, and all instinct with a holy ambition to propa- 
gate his Gospel — then do we find complaint of the 
want of adaptation in the Gospel to do its proper 
work. But the evil lies not there, This Gospel of 
the Lord Jesus is the last hope of mankind for the 
elevation of the human intellect, for the purification 
of the human heart. In it are bound up all the in- 
terests we have in this life — progress, advancement, 
learning, culture, civilization — call it what you may — 
in it are bound up all these, for these are nothing 
after all but the wheels of the car of the Gospel of 
the Son of God ! The Gospel clashes with no true 
interest of mankind ; but always, under all circum- 
stances, meets all the wants of every human soul. 
No, brethren, the fault is not in the Gospel, but in 
the world, and in us. 

Let us revert to the case of St. Paul, as stated in 
the text. He found at Ephesus the Pagan opposi- 
tion, based on the old religion, and to this was added 
worldly interest, because the temple of Diana was 



HO Living Words. 

not merely the centre of an immense worship, but 
of a vast trade. The craftsmen of Diana gained a 
living by making the small models and images 
which were so great a part of the trade of Ephesus. 
He found habits and religious prejudices which had 
been growing for ages, all opposed to the progress 
of the Gospel. 

He found all these ; but they were not the great- 
est obstacles -that he met there, or those that caused 
him most trouble or most pain. He knew that he 
should find the world opposed to him ; but this 
was not his greatest obstacle. It is not with the 
faithful minister of the Gospel of God now. It is 
not, for instance, the fear that the wicked people of 
the city of New York will oppose the spread of the 
Gospel that makes the faithful Pastor tremble, but 
the fear that his own heart will fail him, his own zeal 
die away ; that his own flock will not be faithful to 
him ; that his own familiar friends will shrink from 
him in the time of trial ; that the love of the world 
in the very flock to which he preaches will eat out 
the love of God and zeal for souls. These are the 
adversaries, the stern foes, the walls of adamant. It 
is only by the power of a living faith that the faithful 
minister can work on against such foes as these. 
The bitterest of all enmities are the enmities of 
home, when a man's enemies are those of his own 
household. There are no wars like those which 



The Open Door — At Home. in 

take place within the four walls where peace should 
reign : a war concealed from the world, attempted to 
be concealed even from the very hearts in which it 
is waging ; and yet such a war there always is when- 
ever the Church is not faithful to the great deposit 
of the Gospel which is committed to it. 

Other adversaries are the hypocritical or back- 
slidden members of the Church. You remember 
how it was at Ephesus. Paul came there, and in- 
quired of certain disciples, " Have ye received the 
Holy Ghost since ye believed ? " And they an- 
swered, " We have not so much as heard whether 
there be any Holy Ghost." That was the first diffi- 
culty with the Apostle at Ephesus. And now, 
brethren, I ask you, as St. Paul asked those Ephe- 
sian disciples, this question to-day — and may the Holy 
Spirit carry it home to your hearts and consciences — 
" Have you received the Holy Ghost since you be- 
lieved ? " Have you admitted this celestial visitant, 
and obeyed his voice of power ? Is it so ? Then 
you are not adversaries to the advancement of the 
Lord's kingdom, but helping it forward by that mys- 
terious power which the Holy Ghost supplies to 
those whom He controls. But if, on the other hand, 
you are content with the original initial impulse re- 
ceived at your conversion, content with being gath- 
ered into the Church, and having your name enrolled 
on its books ; nay, if your religious life to-day be 



112 Living Words. 

colder, weaker, feebler in all respects than when you 
began it, let the question again ring in your ears, 
" Have you received the Holy Ghost since you be- 
lieved ? " Let us not live as if, with the Ephesian 
disciples, we had never heard of the Holy Ghost — as 
if the name of that power, which is the life-power of 
the Church, had never reached our ears ! 

Further, cold disciples, indifferent about souls and 
the advancement of the word of God, are adversaries 
to the progress of a general revival. A striking illus- 
tration of what is meant by this class of disciples you 
will find revealed in the Gospel in the case of Bartimeus. 
When Christ was going into Jericho this blind man was 
sitting by the way-side begging, and, as the Saviour 
was passing along the dusty highway — by some 
strange instinct with which God compensates in this 
life for want of sight, by one of those kind dispen- 
sations by which God makes up for some of our im- 
perfections by a clearer and diviner sense — he recog- 
nized the Saviour ; and as he heard the footsteps 
come nearer, and knew that Jesus stood in front 
of him, he raised his voice and cried, "Jesus, thou 
Son of David, have mercy on me ! " One would 
have thought that such an appeal as this would not 
only reach that ear, which is never turned away from 
any sufferer's cry, the All-loving and All-sympathiz- 
ing, but that it would awaken the sympathy of the 
disciples ; but some of them turned around to him 



The Open Door — At Home. 113 

and charged him that he should hold his peace. 
" You disturb the Master ; you are in rags ; you are 
but a poor beggar" — it was in the heyday of the 
Saviour's popularity — " you disturb him by these 
beggarly cries." How can you account for this con- 
duct on the part of some of those who had been with 
Jesus and listened to his teaching ? Just as you 
can account for your own conduct if you will analyze 
it. We hear that souls are converted. "Who is 
it ? " " Well, it is such a one — an apprentice boy." 
Again, " Who is it ? " " A servant girl in such a 
family." And still, " Who is it ? " " Some poor 
blind beggar by the way-side — that is all." Have 
we no consciousness of any such feeling as this cold- 
ness and indifference ? 

These disciples showed three things — a want of 
sympathy with suffering, a want of charity for the 
sufferer, and a want of faith in the living Redeemer. 
Is it not so with us ? We show ourselves a want 
of sympathy with sinners when we are not always 
awake and alive to hear the first distant moan of the 
soul struck by the power of the Holy Spirit ; not 
always ready to run when we hear, even from the 
lips of the beggar or the blind man, the cry, "Jesus, 
thou Son of David, have mercy on me ! " We should 
be ready with a quick sympathy at the very first ut- 
terance even from the lowest of mankind, and fly to 
them, and lead them to where the Master is. 



114 Living Words. 

Then they showed a want of charity. They 
thought, perhaps, that this blind man was an im- 
postor, that he had no claims upon the Saviour. 
Are we never so guilty ? When we hear of certain 
persons having sought religious influence the first 
impression is a sneer : " A poor, worthless wretch 
like that ; I have heard of his seeking religion half a 
dozen times before." This want of charity only re- 
veals the coldness, emptiness, and wrong condition 
of our own hearts. 

And then, further, a want of faith was displayed by 
the disciples. They thought that perhaps the Sav- 
iour could not heal that blind man, and if he tried 
and failed there would be disrepute brought upon 
the Gospel. Our want of faith in the power of 
Christ's Gospel, in the Holy Ghost, and the religion 
we profess, is often more startling than this. The 
Gospel may be useful in bringing the people together 
and keeping them out of mischief ; but when do you 
look for the supernatural manifestation of its power ? 
when do you look for a man or woman to be con- 
verted under the sound of the preacher's voice here 
in the Church ? Should it not be the case ? Why 
should not that man who has resisted the Holy 
Spirit for months or years, that woman who has 
been considering her soul's case so long ; why should 
they not rise up under the sound of my voice to the 
power and liberty of the children of God ? Because 



The Open Door — At Home. 115 

perhaps neither you nor I have faith enough in the 
power of the very Gospel which we preach and be- 
lieve in. Let us try for a more earnest faith, a more 
powerful and genuine conviction that the Gospel is 
really what we think it to be — the power of God to 
salvation ; that it has within it the elements of 
strength and saving for all mankind. 

We have an example of faith in the case of Elijah. 
When the whole land was covered with sorrowing 
and weeping, and famine was approaching on ac- 
count of the drought that had lasted so long, the 
prophet of God went up to the top of Mount Carmel 
and knelt with his head between his knees and 
prayed to Almighty God for rain. He was a man 
of faith. His servant was with him, and he sent the 
servant to look out toward the sea, and inquire and 
bring him word again what the promise was. And 
the servant said, " Master, I see nothing." And 
still the prophet was there with his head between 
his knees, prostrate upon the ground in prayer, and 
the prayer ascended still ; and he sent him again, 
and wearily the servant went again and again. And 
the second time he said, " I see nothing ;" and the 
third time, " I see nothing ;" and the fourth and fifth 
times. Perhaps you would suppose Elijah's voice 
would weary, and that he could not keep himself 
thus prostrate even by the exercise of religious faith. 
There is no such record as that. He still went on 



n6 Living Words. 

with his prayers, and yet again his servant came 
back with the same empty story ; and still the man 
of God sent him back again ; and at last, after the 
seventh coming, he said, " I see a little cloud in the 
sky no bigger than a man's hand." And the prophet 
rose up, and said to him, " Go up, say unto Ahab, 
Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain 
stop thee not." What ground had he for it ? None, 
but that he had prayed to God, and believed in God, 
and there was a little cloud in the sky no bigger than 
a man's hand. And then, too, the record says that 
all the sluices of heaven were opened, and the land 
was drenched with the descending rain. And now 
it may be that we too have prayed, with our heads in 
the dust, that God would revive his work ; asking, 
What is the sign ? and the answer is, Nothing ; no 
converts, no awakening ; and still, if we have been 
patient and hopeful, we can look out and see a cloud, 
though it be no bigger than a man's hand. And 
now to-day I summon you with me to exercise that 
prophet's faith, and believe that by and by we shall 
have the shower coming from all the heavens, drench- 
ing us with the power of the Holy Ghost. O for the 
faith of an Elijah ! O for the faith of a Luther! con- 
tending with his foes again and again, with the heav- 
ens dark above him, and yet waiting for the final 
triumph ! Let us believe, and, believing, go in at 
the effectual door that is opened out before us. 



The Open Door — At Home. 117 

Lastly, we have the result — the determination of 
St. Paul : " I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost." 
Here we find the lesson for ourselves ; not saying, 
Let us stop our praying, our efforts in God's cause ; 
but, I will stay, I will tarry, I will keep on with my 
praying and preaching, my individual activity for the 
advancement of the cause of Christ, and wait for the 
Pentecost. Is that our determination ? Let us make 
it in faith to-day ! The adversaries are perhaps as 
great as St. Paul found them, though they may take 
different shapes. But O how great are our encour- 
agements ! If God be for us who can be against us ? 

The Church never has been without her difficul- 
ties and obstacles both within and without. Samson 
had his Philistines to contend with, and he did not 
shrink in the power which God had given him. The 
enemy was in his own household, and, after he had 
yielded to the blandishments of a foolish wife, he 
went on praying and believing and trusting until the 
emblem of his power returned, and then he was 
strong enough to tear down with one effort the pil- 
lars of the greatest temple in Syria. Nehemiah had 
his Sanballat and Tobiah to weaken his hands, and 
deter him from his work. And when Sanballat 
sends his messages to us that nothing can be done, 
and we need not trouble ourselves on behalf of the 
Church, let us pray as Nehemiah prayed, " O God, 
strengthen my hands!" And then when they seek 



n8 Living Words. 

to turn you aside from your work, say as Nehemiah 
said to them, " I am doing a great work, so that I 
cannot come down. Why should the work cease 
while I leave it and come down to you ? " Let us 
do so, and we shall find, as Elijah did at Dotham 
when his enemies environed him by night with a 
cordon of troops, horsemen and footmen and char- 
iots on every hand ; so that when his servant went 
forth in the morning he brought him word that the 
mount was surrounded with chariots and horsemen, 
and he asked, "Alas! my master, how shall we do ?" 
But his master knew in whom he trusted ; the Lord's 
prophet knew that, no matter how many or how 
strong his foes, he had a power behind him and with- 
in him stronger than all of them. So, by the exer- 
cise of a simple faith, he raised his voice to God, and 
prayed that the eyes of his servant might be opened 
that he might see. And he looked around, and there, 
upon the hills on every hand, above this cordon that 
seemed arrayed to compass and secure their death, 
hovering in the air, back upon the hills, rising, squad- 
ron upon squadron, their celestial armor glistening 
in the morning sunlight, he saw the chariots of Israel 
and the horsemen thereof. So it is with us if we are 
faithful to our Master. There may be enemies in 
the world and in our hearts, enemies in the back- 
sliders that are in the Church, enemies in the cold 
and lukewarm Christians, and even those whom the 



The Open Door — At Home. 119 

Holy Spirit is teaching and taking hold of; but 
around us all are the chariots and horsemen of heaven, 
the power of Christ and of his Holy Spirit. Let us 
tarry as did Paul, and by and by the day of Pente- 
cost will come, and we shall see, as we have never 
seen before, the power of God revealed in this His 
house. 



120 Living Words. 



VII. 



THE OPEN D00R-ABR0AD. 

A great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many 
adversaries. — 1 Cor. xvi, 9. 



I used this text a few Sundays ago with reference to 
the Church at home ; it will furnish us a theme to- 
day to consider as well the state and prospects of 
the Church in the world at large. "A great and ef- 
fectual door" suggests an opening for the propaga- 
tion of Christianity. " There are many adversaries." 
This clause suggests to us the obstacles in the way 
of that propagation ; and these are the two divisions 
of the subject — natural, and, I trust, simple. 

That the whole world needs Christianity is a 
proposition that I need not here undertake to estab- 
lish. We all know very well that the world — the 
Pagan world — without the Gospel is destitute 01 
moral goodness. There is no moral goodness among 
men, except where Christianity has taken root. The 
natural virtues exist to a certain extent among the 
Pagans, because, as I have repeatedly explained to 
you, a certain observance of the natural virtues is 



The Open Door — Abroad. 121 

essential to the very existence of human society ; and 
where society exists, even in its most rudimental 
forms, if it be society at all, there must be an ob- 
servance of the natural virtues to a certain extent : 
the love of parents for their children and of children 
for their parents, the laws of property, the relations 
of mine and thine. If society is developed at all, 
these things come up of necessity for its conserva- 
tion. But these virtues are only partially and im- 
perfectly observed in Pagan countries compared with 
Christian lands. Let us take one single point of 
illustration. The essence of Christian character is 
faith — faith between man and his Maker, then faith 
in the relations of man to man in society ; and the 
duty that grows out of this relation is truthfulness 
between man and man, as well as confidence in God, 
and veracity and honesty in dealing with Him. The 
idea of veracity, as necessarily ruling human life and 
conduct, is nowhere found except in Christian lands. 
Only imperfectly is it carried out here, I admit, but 
so very mudi beyond all the advances of heathen- 
dom in this line of morality is Christianity that you 
may take it as a characteristic. Among the Chinese 
veracity is not regarded. The testimony of all trav- 
elers is much the same — that truth is there consid- 
ered a secondary matter. And yet, as we are very 
well taught, this is the cohesive point of human so- 
ciety. Cicero declared it nearly two thousand years 



122 Living Words. 

ago with the light he possessed. We know it more 
clearly under the knowledge we have from God. 
Truthfulness between man and man is almost un- 
known, except under the dominion of Christianity. 
It does not exist under Pagan religions ; it did not 
exist under the best of the Pagan religions — that of 
Greece and Rome in their most highly cultivated 
periods. It is not now in Pagan lands the direst 
insult that can be offered to a man to tell him he 
lies, as it is in this country. 

Let us consider. How much of the world is in 
this Pagan condition ? Two thirds of the whole 
earth. The population of the globe is eleven hun- 
dred millions ; some make it eleven hundred and 
fifty ; and out of this the Pagans are six hundred 
and seventy-five millions, the Mohammedans one 
hundred and forty millions, the Jews fourteen mill- 
ions, and the Christians three hundred and twenty 
millions. Two thirds of the whole number are sit- 
ting in heathen darkness, living in the morality of 
Paganism. 

Are they satisfied with this state of things — even 
the heathen themselves ? No, my brethren, all rec- 
ords of past Pagandom, especially where Pagandom 
possessed the forms of civilization and culture — 
and, in fact, we have no historical records except 
where there is or was civilization and culture — all 
show the expectation of a higher form of life ; 



The Open Door — Abroad. 123 

throughout all there is a yearning for a better state 
of things. Travelers — sailors, missionaries, and men 
that go to the ends of the earth — tel'i us there is 
among the heathen world an unconscious yearning 
for a higher state of existence. Every-where the 
visions of a lost Eden haunt the descendants of 
Adam and Eve, expelled from the garden by the 
anger of a God whose law they had violated ; every- 
where, coming down through the ages, darkened, 
distorted, and almost lost, but yet surviving by force 
of the Divine power that is in them, there are the 
traditions of a better age — the golden age of man — 
when the light of God shone upon his face. And so 
among the very darkest tribes you find a yearning 
for a better life than this. 

These hundreds of millions of whom I have 
spoken have been, to a large extent, inaccessible 
to the Gospel. But within the last year, more than 
any year since Jesus Christ ascended from the hill 
of Bethany, leaving to his disciples the commission, 
" Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost " — 
within the last year, more than in any year since 
that blessed ascent of the Saviour, has the world 
been opened to the propagation of that Saviour's 
truth — has the way opened for the descendants of 
his Apostles to go, in obedience to his command, 
and teach all nations. Doors that have seemed for 



124 Living Words. 

thousands of years to be of adamant, thrice locked, 
have been suddenly opened. Nationalities that have 
seemed for ages to be environed by walls of preju- 
dice, of hoary traditions, of strong and powerful su- 
perstitions — triple walls indeed — nationalities thus 
environed are suddenly opened to the access of Gos- 
pel light. Marvelous are the developments of the 
last year ! Few of us have begun to contemplate 
them in all their length and breadth and fullness ; 
fewer still have asked, " How does this bear on 
me ? " 

Those of you who have read that extraordinary 
book, " Livingstone's Travels in Africa," have learned 
from it that in the centre of that country there is a 
rich, fertile, and comparatively healthful territory ; 
large districts in which white men may live without, 
being exposed, as they are on the sea-coast, to the 
perils of almost fatal miasma ; and that there are 
uncounted thousands of African natives, compara- 
tively docile, who are of a higher grade of intelli- 
gence and culture than those upon the coast, and 
willing to be taught the rites and religion of the 
Gospel. There alone a door is opened to sixty mill- 
ions of Pagans. 

Let us turn our attention for a moment to Asia, 
that land of teeming myriads, where men are so 
crowded together that they jostle each other at every 
step they take in life ? How is it there ? 



The Open Door — Abroad. 125 

In India an insurrection, and the suppression of 
the insurrection, have caused the British Government 
to assume the direct control of the country ; and you 
know one of the consequences of these wars has 
been to turn the eyes of the whole British com- 
munity, and of necessity, to a greater extent, to 
turn the eyes of the British Government, upon the 
superstitions of the country. The government must 
inevitably adopt a principle the very opposite of that 
which has guided them in the past. Tolerate them 
they may, for toleration is the very nature of the Gos- 
pel of. Jesus Christ; to sustain them, feed them, 
nourish them as it has done heretofore, to the shame 
and disgrace of that great nation, will hereafter be 
impossible. More than that, the fact of this insur- 
rection and the suppression of it will show the mill- 
ions of the heathen there the utter folly of contend- 
ing with Christian power, and the reverence so in- 
spired for Christian power will be the opening of a 
great and effectual door for the preaching to them 
of the Christian truth. And further still, the closer 
scrutiny through which the whole course of the gov- 
ernment must go, with thousands of eyes looking 
on where only one was turned before, must tend to 
better the condition of these people, and make them 
more accessible to the preaching of the Gospel and 
the representations of both British and American 
missionaries. Here a door is thrown more widely 



126 Living Words. 

open than ever to preach the Gospel to three hun- 
dred millions of our race. 

Let us turn to China, that land of old and strange 
mystery, a land on which the imaginations of our 
occidental poets and dreamers have dwelt for thou- 
sands of years, until we have come to consider it as 
fabled Cathay — almost as dream-land itself; and yet 
we meet, as we turn to it, with sober, substantial facts. 
The population is estimated by the Registrar Gen- 
eral at five hundred millions. The Bishop of Vic- 
toria estimates it at four hundred millions — one third 
of the entire population of the whole earth in that 
one region, and under that one government. To get 
a faint idea of this population, allowing it to be four 
hundred millions, suppose that these millions were 
to pass up that aisle, and up in front of this chancel, 
and down through the other aisle, one by one, none 
of us would live to see the end of that procession, 
unless it may be the youngest children among us. 
A century, all but a few years, would have to roll by 
before the march would end. And now to these 
millions upon millions of our fellows the door is 
opened as it has never been opened before. Indeed 
it never has been opened before ; every attempt to 
preach the Gospel there has been almost a total 
failure so far as the interior of the country is con- 
cerned, and the attempt has been almost certain 
death. Even to the Roman Catholic missionaries, with 



The Open Door — Abroad. 127 

all their skill, it has been death after death. They 
have been treading upon treacherous ashes at every 
step. And now, not only are the ports open in a 
certain loose way, but foreigners may go through the 
whole empire ; Christianity may be propagated under 
the distinct protection of a treaty, and Christians 
themselves must be protected by officers of the gov- 
ernment. The Bishop of Victoria, in a letter dated 
on the eighteenth of October, and filled with Chris- 
tian tenderness and kindness, says : the American 
minister, Mr. Read, has the high distinction of being 
the first ever to obtain by the stipulations of a treaty 
an honorable mention of the beneficent character of 
the Christian religion, and secure universal tolera- 
tion for native converts throughout the Chinese em- 
pire. The treaty of Lord Elgin has gained for for- 
eigners ffee access to the interior of the country, and 
overthrown the last barriers that interrupted our free 
communication with every part of China. There is 
something exceedingly beautiful in this combination 
of the American and British ministers securing, each 
of them, a treaty, made, it is true, by worldly hands, 
and made in worldly interests, but each of them in- 
serting in his treaty this specific declaration in favor 
of Christianity and in favor of Christian missionaries. 
What is this but the coming time when the true re- 
lations between Christianity and civilization shall be 
understood ; when the diplomacy as well as the com- 



128 Living Words. 

merce of the earth shall be subservient to the propa- 
gation of the Gospel of Christ ? Unquestionably 
this shall be the rule in the long run, and this is its 
inauguration. It might well be that that little cop^ 
per wire lying stretched across the Atlantic from the 
Irish coast to Newfoundland should carry across the 
thrilling message that this treaty had been made 
with China and then speak no more, as if its work 
were done. It might well be so. This is the open- 
ing of a new era, when diplomatists make mention 
of Christianity as one of the necessities of a treaty, 
and news of it can run to and fro over the- earth 
with the speed of lightning. 

Further, we have thought of Japan as a still more 
mysterious land than China, and our dreams of it 
have been as of a land of gems and gold ; but now 
we have learned that Japan contains twenty-five or 
thirty millions of people living under a very fair and 
tolerable civilization, and that the outward moralities 
are pretty well observed, and the vices of more trop- 
ical regions are not known, industry and thrift being 
the prevailing characteristics of the people. And, 
finally, we have made a treaty with Japan, and these 
thirty millions are open to the preaching of the Gos- 
pel as they never have been before. 

I have said enough. A great and effectual door is 
opened when thus in one year three, four, or five 
hundred millions of our race are, for the first time, 



Ttie Open Door — Abroad. 129 

brought within hearing of the Gospel of the Lord 
Jesus. A great and effectual door ! We can almost 
apply the psalm, although in a sense different from 
that for which it was originally intended : " Lift up 
your heads, O ye gates ; and be ye lifted up, ye ever- 
lasting doors ; and the King of glory shall go in." 
Gates are lifted, barriers are fallen, doors are opened. 
It is for us to say whether the ark of the covenant 
shall go forward to enter them, whether the army of 
Heaven shall pass through them or not, for we are 
the guardians of that ark of the covenant. 

And now let us look, in the second place, at the 
obstacles in the way of the propagation of the Gos- 
pel. The obstacles are not in the plan of God. If 
Christianity does not advance as rapidly as we think 
it ought, the obstacles, the adversaries, are not in the 
plan and arrangement of God. His whole word is 
filled with the doctrine that the Christian religion is 
to triumph universally. The heathen are to be given 
to Christ for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts 
of the earth for a possession ; that the time shall 
come when by every nation and kindred and people 
and tongue the name of the Lord Jesus shall be 
adored. The plan of God for the redemption of 
Christ is that it shall triumph over all its foes, and 
all mankind shall share in its blessings. 

We are wont to account the existence of a heathen 

civilization, like that of China or India, as obstacles 

9 



130 Living Words. 

in the way of the propagation of the Gospel. I 
would not underrate them. Enormous, indeed, is 
the power of a superstition wrought into the very 
groundwork of a nation's life, which has had thou- 
sands of years to grow, and has developed itself into 
a mighty tree, with wide-spreading branches, under 
which millions of men fancy they are taking rest 
and repose. And so of all other elements of Pagan- 
ism : they are mighty and strong. And yet the 
great fact at the root of them all is that the carnal 
mind is enmity against God — is not of itself obedient 
to the law of God, and cannot be. The root of it all 
is in human depravity. And now for what purpose 
was Christ manifest among men but that he might 
destroy the works of the devil ? that this depravity 
should give way before the moral doctrine and power 
he should bring into the world ? that the blood which 
he shed should, with the march of His Gospel, purge 
the nations in its advance ? And this Gospel is 
adapted to its end, as God adapts his instruments 
and endows his teachers and his preachers with the 
power essential to the great undertaking. There is 
no want of adaptation in the Gospel. It has proved 
itself, wherever tried, to be the highest civilizer, the 
best moralizer, and most potent ruler over the hearts 
and habits of men and nations — and this is history. 

Where, then, are these obstacles and adversaries ? 
They cannot be found outside of the Church in God's 



The Open Door — Abroad. 131 

plan, nor in the want of adaptation of the Gospel ; 
nor can we find them in the degradation and super- 
stition of the heathen, Where then, brethren, shall 
we look for them ? Let us look at home ; let us look 
into our own habits of mind, our own modes of feel- 
ing and thinking and acting ; then let us ask no 
longer where are the adversaries of the kingdom of 
the Lord Jesus ! The Church of God is empowered 
and authorized to do this work of propagating the 
Gospel. No other power is authorized or can do it. 
No government, no nation, no King, no Emperor or 
diplomatist. They may become the instruments and 
agencies. Kings may be nursing fathers, queens 
nursing mothers ; but the power of life is the Church 
of the living God upon the earth — the kingdom of 
Christ established here in this royal dwelling-place 
of Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. 
We are His courtiers, His captains, His generals, 
His admirals, His administrators — we are responsi- 
ble for the work of His kingdom and its advance- 
ment upon the earth. 

You may say this is a hard saying ; you may ask, 
Why does God not do the work more rapidly than 
the Church's slow agency is accomplishing it ? The 
Church's agency has been slow because the Church 
has not come up to do God's work by the power 
which God has given her. Agencies for propaga- 
ting the Gospel must be twofold. The one repre- 



132 Living Words. 

sents the power of God, exerted through the grace of 
the Lord Jesus, going before and accompanying and 
strengthening every effort. The Church must rec- 
ognize this power, and go forward according to her 
capacity to free mankind, or she fails of her duty, 
and cannot come up to the demand of God. 

God might work miracles ; but did you ever re- 
flect on the amount of conversion accomplished by 
miracles ? Have you ever thought how little con- 
verting power was in them ? Let us take a single 
glance at the history of the results of miracles even 
where they were necessary for the establishment of 
the truth. In Egypt what miracle power was dis- 
played ! Flash followed flash, and struck no ray of 
light into the dark Egyptian mind, or into the mind 
of Pharaoh that sat upon the throne ; thunder-peal 
followed after thunder-peal of divine vengeance ; the 
angel of death careered over the land in all its length 
and breadth, striking down the eldest born in every 
house, and in every house there was sorrow, tears, 
death, and yet no penitence. Miracles governed Is- 
rael. As Israel went out, every step, from the first 
night's journey out of Memphis to the very last upon 
the shores of the river of Jordan, was marked by a 
display of the divine power visible to all Israel. 
Wonder succeeded wonder ; grand displays of the 
mighty power of God attended the people at every 
movement of their journey. The pillar of cloud was 



The Open Door — Abroad. 133 

a perpetual testimony by day, the pillar of fire was a 
perpetual luminary by night ; and yet, in spite of all 
these and of yet grander miracles, when the sea was 
made to stand apart as though crystallized into glass 
on the right hand and left as God's people were led 
forward — or those grander miracles still, when water 
gushed out of the rock at the command of a sinful 
man to satisfy God's people, and afterward when on 
Sinai God's presence was visible in the midst of 
thunder, lightning, and smoke : all these transcend- 
ent miracles were done, and yet what followed ? 
Out of all the millions that witnessed these miracles 
there was not a man, woman, or child — not even 
Moses, the great leader — who could enter into the 
promised land ; and why ? Because of their unbe- 
lief. Do not ask, then, why God should not work 
miracles for the propagation of His Gospel. A 
miracle has been wrought once for all ; the last, the 
greatest and most wonderful — God manifest in the 
flesh to redeem mankind to himself by his own 
death upon the cross. And the Holy Ghost, follow- 
ing Christ's crucifixion and ascension, came to con- 
vince the world of sin. Why ? " Because they be- 
lieved not on me." That is the secret of it all. The 
Church of the Lord Jesus is not, after all, a believ- 
ing Church. It has not, I mean to say, the entire 
faith in God's promises, in God's power, in Christ's 
redemption, and in the blood of the Saviour — the 



134 Living Words. 

entire faith in this supernatural array of agencies 
and powers which God is using for the propagation 
of His own truth. 

The Church does not believe enough. Here and 
there a man believes enough, and such a man will 
say, I am ready to go to India ; another starts up 
and says, I will go to Bulgaria. Another, in whom 
the power of faith is strong, says, " If you need a 
man for China or Japan I will go there." There are 
believing souls ready to go abroad ; and among 
those who stay at home there is now and then a 
man who, as he goes on enjoying the good things of 
this earth, and is protected in his property by the 
safeguards of our civilization, which draw their 
strength from the Gospel, will say, " This is not 
mine, it is God's, and God commands me to use it 
for the spread of His kingdom and the advancement 
of His truth." 

After all we must admit that the Church has not 
risen to the height of this great argument, and come 
to believe in Christ and in the propagation of his 
kingdom. The disciples could not cast out a devil 
from a lunatic because of their unbelief. " If ye have 
faith," said the Saviour, " as a grain of mustard-seed, 
ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to 
• yonder place ; and it shall remove : and nothing shall 
be impossible unto you." This is the language of hy- 
perbole, but it means that the highest reach of our 



The Open Door — Abroad. 135 

faith cannot be too high. Most of us still see with the 
eyes of nature, and see no further than we can see in 
the sphere and atmosphere of nature. We look 
upon the propagation of missions as upon the ex- 
pansion of commerce and civilization, and as if there 
were no higher power employed in the one than in 
the other. All are, indeed, illustrations of God's 
power, and we may ask, Why was not commerce 
sooner developed ? why was it not as extensive five 
thousand years ago as now ? God might have 
ordained it from the beginning, but He left it 
to the discovery and navigation and the activities 
of man, so showing that God and man were to be 
co-workers. 

So with all discoveries. Why did not men have 
gas-light two or three hundred years ago ? God Al- 
mighty does not make that gas-light ; He supplies 
all the elements of it, and frames the laws, and keeps 
them in operation, by which it is manufactured and 
gives us light. It was the work of human industry 
and persevering efforts. These are analogies which 
the Church of God dares not to neglect. God is wait- 
ing for us to find out our whole duty and go up to the 
discharge of it, and then His kingdom will triumph, 
and only then. Oh for faith to take God at His 
word ! a faith like that of Elijah in his Maker. 
Even amid the opposing hosts of Baal he demanded 
the fire from heaven! Oh for a faith like that of 



136 Living Words. 

Elisha, who could see the cloud as a man's hand afar 
off, and in it detect the coming shower ! In conse- 
quence of a want of faith there is a want of holi- 
ness. " Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation ; 
and uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then shall 
I teach transgressors thy ways ; and sinners shall 
be converted unto thee." That is to say, the 
more faith we have the more love we shall have, 
the more of Christ's presence, spirit, and power ; 
and the more we are baptized into this love, the 
more this sacred fire of love purges ' away and 
burns out the elements of evil, selfish desires, the 
more we shall do for the propagation of God's 
kingdom. Then more and more shall" we teach 
transgressors the way of God, and sinners shall be 
converted to Him. 

Want of self-sacrifice comes of a want of faith. 
A few are willing to go, and a few of those that 
stay at home are willing to support those that go ; 
but there is a lamentable want of the spirit of 
self-sacrifice among us in both these respects in 
reference to the great demands of the Gospel and 
the doors that are opened — sacrifice of person as 
well as means. 

The newspapers recently contained an account of 
a shipwreck on the coast of the Scilly Isles which 
was very thrilling in all its details. The wreck was 
seen from the shore, and a number of fishermen 



The Open Door — Abroad. 137 

manned the only boat that could be found, and suc- 
ceeded in reaching the vessel through the breakers 
with great labor and difficulty, and they brought 
boat-load after boat-load off until only three or four 
remained. The storm increased, and the men, being 
exhausted, lay down upon a rock on the coast as 
they landed in absolute weariness, and said they 
could go no more to the wreck. An old man, a 
Methodist class-leader, a man of seventy or eighty 
years of age, was standing, with a few others, on the 
shore, and hearing them declare that they had made 
the last trip, he prayed, and then said, " If four others 
will go with me and row, I will steer the boat and 
bring off the captain and the others that are left on 
that ship." Four young men started — two of them 
the old man's sons — and said, "Let us go. You 
stay upon the rock and pray." And so the boat 
went, and the old man knelt upon the rock and 
prayed, and the young men looked back, and, as 
they saw him still pray, the consciousness that he 
was there, and belief in his good heart and strong 
faith, nerved them and stimulated their failing 
strength, and on they went, breasting wave after 
wave, and safely reached the ship and brought those 
upon the wreck to the shore in safety, and then all 
fell down at the knees of the old man and gave praise 
to God. 

So, brethren, our work and duty lie before us. 



138 L iving Words. 

There are sinking upon the wreck of heathendom, 

not three, or four, or five, but millions upon millions 

of our race. The life-boat is going to and fro, but 

there is not strength enough ; the hands employed 

are weary. Men of New York, come ye to the 
rescue ! 



The Gospel Enough. 139 



VIII. 
THE GOSPEL ENOUGH. 

If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead. — Luke xvi, 31. 



We have a sure oracle and rule of life in the word 
of God, and we have no need to seek any other 
guidance but that ; and yet men are prone, and al- 
ways have been prone, to forsake the fountain of 
living water and hew out for themselves cisterns, 
broken cisterns, that can hold no water. When God 
was giving the law it was necessary for Him to warn 
the people against certain false oracles of the people 
around them. "Those nations which thou shalt 
possess hearkened unto observers ofttimes, and unto 
diviners : but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not 
suffered thee so to do." And so, by the mouth of 
the prophet Isaiah, he renews the injunction hun- 
dreds of years later: "And when they shall say unto 
you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and 
unto wizards that peep and that mutter : should not 
a people seek unto their God ? for the living to the 
dead ? To the law and to the testimony." 

These tendencies were not confined to the olden 



140 Living Words, 

time : the skeptic now, as then, seeks to excuse his 
unbelief by complaining of the want of proof; the 
sinner cheats himself now as he cheated himself 
then, by the vain pretext that his evil state is owing 
to the want of means to change it. We are all apt 
to wish for agencies more potent than the simple 
means of God's appointment for the conversion of 
the world, namely, His word expounded by His min- 
isters, and brought to our hearts by the force of 
His Holy Spirit. We desire to go beyond these 
simple means and ask, as the Jews asked, for a sign. 
It is to all such that the sermon to-day, with the text 
on which it is based, is addressed : " If they hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead." 

The proposition of the text is, that those who show 
themselves unsusceptible to impression from the 
means presented in the word of God will not be 
persuaded by any other means, and to develop this 
proposition is all that we have to do this morning. 
It is not difficult to prove it. The first argument 
drawn from the nature of the case would be suffi- 
cient if there were none to be found in history. 
What is the nature of the case ? Why, that a spir- 
itual end is to be accomplished, a moral result to be 
brought about — the purification, regeneration, and 
sanctification of human nature. How is this to be 
done ? By magic ? by signs ? by wonders, miracles, 



The Gospel Enough. 141 

or special interpositions ? Nay, the very mention 
of these, in connection with a moral result, shows us 
at once the folly and madness of them. If the 
means employed by the Divine Being for the accom- 
plishment of this moral purpose of His were to be 
irresistible in their force upon the intellect, alarming, 
perhaps, and stupefying the mind, while at the same 
time impressing it, what would become of the moral- 
ity of the change in and of itself? It would be a me- 
chanical and not a moral one. It is essential to the 
state of probation not so much that certain virtuous 
acts should be done, as that a certain disposition 
should be forrned in the agent toward virtue, good- 
ness, and truth. Good acts may be brought about 
by an irresistible force, and good opinions may be 
brought about by irresistible evidence, the mind 
being so constituted as to obey irresistible evidence ; 
but there would be no discipline, no culture of the 
moral nature, no testing of the individual, nothing of 
the character of probation whatsoever ; there would 
be none of the obedience of sons, loving and gentle, 
turning to the Father and saying, "As thou hast 
commanded so I will obey." No, but all of us would 
obey as the slaves obey under the lash of the task- 
master ; obey as the soldier obeys under a despotism 
that he dare not for a single moment forget ; obey 
as the stars obey, without haste and without rest, 
like mere machines. No, brethren, there cannot be 



142 Living Words. 

any irresistible influence, or teaching, or example in 
the propagation of Christianity. Moral means alone 
are fitting for the accomplishment of spiritual ends, 
the propagation of a spiritual religion. 

In the second place, the necessary moral means 
are presented for us in the word of God, which 
furnishes us adequate knowledge of the relations 
between God and man, and adequate laws to regu- 
late all these relations; as well as adequate motives 
to obey these laws. What more is necessary ? The 
knowledge that we may know what is to be done ; 
the law that we may know the obligation for the 
doing of it ; the motives that we may be left with- 
out excuse if we do not obey. What more is re- 
quired ? It furnishes adequate motives to obedience, 
for it shows us what we are as sinners, our incapac- 
ity to do good, our utter helplessness in and of our- 
selves, and, still more, that there is guilt in this 
condition, and that this guilt will some day bring its 
penalty. It shows us the sin, the guilt, the peril, in 
our wretched humanity, as well as the way to escape, 
pointing us to the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sins of the world. 

When the word of God comes with this exhibition 
of the law, this exhibition of the doom, and this ex- 
hibition of the Saviour, is any thing else needed ? 
Are any other means necessary ? Are they neces- 
sary for your individual mind ? If you are resisting 



The Gospel Enough. 143 

still, it is not because the means are not adequate. 
No. " Ye will not come unto me," says Christ to 
some of the rebellious ones ; " ye will not come 
unto me that ye may have life." It is because the 
will is corrupt, and not the means insufficient ; be- 
cause you do not want to be saved, not because the 
way of salvation is not open. 

" If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God." Do not speak of the 
evidence of Christianity being inadequate. Have 
you ever tried it ? There is here a celestial chem- 
istry which no man can learn who does not go into 
the laboratory himself, and use his own crucible and 
his own fire. " If any man will do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." In the 
same spirit was Christ's affecting lamentation over 
Jerusalem : " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill- 
est the prophets, and stonest them which are sent 
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens 
under her wings, and ye would not." Christ him- 
self, with that all-embracing love of his, with that 
mighty, infinite heart of his, palpitating in every fibre 
with a tender affection for that beloved Jerusalem, 
could not bring the Jews to him because they would 
not. With all his wealth of love, and wealth of mira- 
cle ; with all his displays of benevolence and mani- 
festations of divine power, it was still a failure ; 



144 Living Words. 

Jerusalem would not come, and Christ would not 
compel her. 

I think, then, it is sufficiently shown, from the 
nature of the case, that the means presented in the 
word of God are the right means, and, being the 
right means, they are the adequate means ; and that 
those who do not receive these means, and are un- 
willing to listen to the Gospel simply as presented, 
have no excuse in their inadequacy or unfitness. 
But let us turn to the proof from all history upon 
this point. The question is whether, in the failure 
of ordinary means to rouse a man's attention, mi- 
raculous means would be efficacious or not. Per- 
haps you may have thought, as many a man does, 
" If I had lived in those days, and seen Christ walk- 
ing with his disciples, healing the sick and raising 
the dead, and stood by him when he wrought those 
miracles among the Jews, my heart would have been 
softened, and I should have yielded to him." You 
may be saying even to-day in your heart, " All this 
is very well ; and if I could be satisfied of these 
miracles that are recorded in the word of God, I 
would believe in Christianity and act up to it." O 
fool ! as if the grandest of all miracles was not this 
religion itself! as if the grandest of all works was 
not the change of a sinful nature into harmony with 
the law of God ! as if the every-day life of Chris- 
tianity were not a greater wonder than an occa- 



The Gospel Enough. 145 

sional display .of divine power ! The every-day 
course of God's law is sublimer than its disturbance. 
To see the grand manifestations of a people's will 
under the forms of law, to see a nation go on, cen- 
tury after century, in order, peace, and harmony, 
under a form of government, be it monarchical, re- 
publican, or other, provided it be an expression of 
the people's will, with the regular functions of the 
law duly administered, and all the ordinances of the 
government faithfully carried out — a vast society 
held together for generation after generation without 
jar or tumult — what could be sublimer than this ? 
And if, after hundreds of years, a bad king or a bad 
administration should come, and the people deter- 
mine that all this should change, and rise up sud- 
denly, it may be, in the night, and without using the 
ordinary means by which the popular will had been 
carried out, without the aid of any intermediate func- 
tionaries, judicial administrators, or whatever you 
may choose to call them — when the people rise and 
say, " This state of things must not be, this man 
must go down " — men stand aghast, and call it revo- 
lution ; and these are the eras and epochs of human- 
ity. Yet it is grander to see the machine working 
on simply, serenely, and consistently, age after age, 
than to see this sudden miracle of the very same 
power working without the forms of law. And so it 

is with miracles. The order of nature preserved for 

10 



146 Living Words. 

generation after generation, the spheres keeping up 
the harmony of their perpetual music, and going on 
in their sublime orbits as God placed them in the 
beginning, is a grander sight than the sudden erup- 
tion of Vesuvius or a sudden intervention of God by 
miracle. It is God in both cases : God in the first 
case working on through the ages according to laws 
which he has implanted in nature, and the systems 
of the universe as he made them ; God in the other 
case working suddenly by his own sovereignty, with- 
out any such intermediate intervention of the law. 
That is all the difference : God in the regular order, 
and God in what we call the miracle. And yet men, 
who will not be persuaded by the regular order of 
the Divine administration that there is a God, say, 
" Only let this order be disturbed and we will be- 
lieve." As if men who deny that there is any proper 
sovereignty of the people, and wait until some out- 
break of popular fury demonstrates that there is, 
should believe by seeing its irregular exercise ! 

You cannot have miracles ; but even if you could, 
you would not be persuaded by them if your heart 
and will were opposed to God's truth. How was it 
with the very miracles presupposed in the text ? 
Let us appeal to one single instance in the case of 
Lazarus. The man Lazarus was raised from the 
dead by Jesus Christ himseK He stood by the 
grave, and there, with the family of Lazarus, were 



The Gospel Enough. 147 

gathered certain Jews that were susceptible of re- 
ceiving an impression, and whose hearts were al- 
ready open to the Word of God — such as believed 
in Moses and the prophets ; and with them still 
others were gathered, adherents of the scribes and 
the Pharisees, full of prejudice, and bitter and hard- 
ened in their hearts ; and how was it then ? They 
came together, and Christ, in the might of his di- 
vine power, uttered but one word, and life came 
back to the corpse, and he sat up in his tomb, and 
came forth in his grave-clothes, and was seen by his 
friends and by those believing Jews, as well as by 
those others, the Pharisees and Sadducees, and what 
was the result ? The Pharisees, we are told, came 
together and counseled, and said, "What shall we 
do ? This man doeth many miracles." The end of 
it was, that from that very day forth they took coun- 
sel together how they might put him to death. 
They refused to believe Moses and the prophets, and 
when this grandest of signs — for the resurrection of 
a man from the dead is the grandest of miracles — 
was wrought before them, what was the result ? 
The redoubling of their hatred, an outburst of fran- 
tic fury, and plotting and planning to destroy the 
life of the Life-giver. Not satisfied with that, a very 
few days after they were determined that this new 
example should not last ; that this specimen of life 
put " under the ribs of death " should not walk about 



148 Living Words. 

and tempt men to believe, and they said, "This 
Lazarus must die," and they took counsel to put 
him to death, for fear the Jews should believe on 
Jesus. Thus a man raised from the dead con- 
firmed only those ready to believe, and hardened 
and made still more perverse those that would not 
listen. 

And now for the other example, the example of 
Christ himself. He died and rose again, and what 
was the effect of that resurrection ? Take the case 
of the Roman soldiers put to guard the tomb — stern, 
hard men, so disciplined that there never was a 
case known of one of them sleeping on his post 
Their discipline was the strictest ever known before 
that period or since. They witnessed the resurrection 
of Jesus ; they saw the incipient movements, the 
opening of the grave and rolling away of the stone, 
and saw the angel with the lightning face and rai- 
ment white as snow ; they saw the sudden springing 
of the dead man to life again ; they saw, and as they 
saw they trembled ; and these strong, mail-clad sol- 
diers became as dead men. " Oh," we shall say, 
" now they believe ; here is the evidence ; these shall 
be the first converts from the Roman army, and it 
shall come by and by in troops to listen to them." 
The very next day these men, who, under the first 
shock of the miracle trembled like aspens, sold their 
testimony for a piece of gold, and were willing to 



The Gospel Enough. 149 

declare that men stole him away while they slept. 
And as for the scribes and Pharisees, the opponents 
of Jesus, this crowning miracle of the resurrection 
only redoubled their hatred. 

It may be noticed that men who reject the Scrip- 
ture are the most ready of all men to accept pre- 
tended revelations. Oh how we all yearn for reve- 
lations ! When we turn from those that God has 
made in his kindness how ready we are to believe 
false oracles ! Modern Spiritualism is an evidence 
of the fact. Men who do not believe the word of 
God at all come, nervous as a sick child, to listen 
for a sound from the other world. The prophet had 
been with Saul, and striven for years and years, to 
teach him, and he shut his ears and would not listen ; 
but when Samuel was dead he must send for the 
Witch of Endor to see if he could not get the dead 
man up to give him the very information he might 
have gathered from his living lips. He was stunned 
for a moment, but forgot all the next day, rushing 
to the battle, and then to suicide — too often the end 
of those who seek these wizards who peep and mut- 
ter. It is the very essence of unbelief to give that 
credence to false oracles which they deny to God. 
Caligula, who mocked at the name of the gods, trem- 
bled when it thundered, and covered himself in his 
bed until the dread scene should pass by. The devil 
may not tempt you to imitate the cruelty of Caligula, 



150 Living Words. 

but will find it easier to tempt you to imitate his 
mingled skepticism and cowardice. 

And now with reference to our own personal life 
and activity. Let us take this lesson to heart, and 
use no other weapon than He has provided. You are 
a soldier of His, and if you attempt to use any weapon 
other than the sword of the Spirit, no matter how 
terrible it may seem, or likely to do execution, the 
end of it will be that the recoil will hurt yourself. 
Do not attempt to impose upon any one with pious 
frauds. There was a time when men thought that 
cheating was a proper way to serve God. But the 
preaching of his word, the exhibition of his law, the 
proclamation of his truth, the cross of Jesus Christ 
— these are the simple means for Christian teaching 
and the propagation of the Gospel which God pro- 
vides ; let us not dare to go beyond them. There 
is always a reaction from the use of improper means. 
Twelve years ago a large part of the people of cer- 
tain districts of this country were alarmed at the 
supposed near approach of the millennium. The 
people who got up this story were deluded, miser- 
ably deluded, and perhaps on that account excusa- 
ble, many of them ; but there was no excuse, and 
never will be, for making use of a delusion like that 
for the propagation of the Gospel. I do not say that 
a state of mind produced by such means may not be 
seized to urge home Gospel truths ; but the man who 



The Gospel Enough. 151 

will undertake to make use of the millennium tend- 
ency to convert souls by it runs into a snare. There 
is no use seeking to make impressions on people by 
miracles, or by prophecies of the near approach of the 
millennium. It makes no difference to you or me 
whether the millennium comes now or ten thousand 
years hence, Our duty is to make use of present 
advantages : of this blessed Sabbath-day ; to use it to 
His glory according to His law, listening to His word, 
and doing the work it puts upon us. 

And so in regard to your individual conversion. 
Use the means afforded ; wait for no marvelous in- 
fluences. Ten chances, a hundred chances to one 
you will never feel them. God's means are just, and 
he will not use any other. I do not say that an 
alarming calamity may not startle you to seek after 
the truth ; but you will find the means are still the 
same as to-day, " repentance toward God, and faith 
toward our Lord Jesus Christ." Why should you 
wait for calamity before seeking after God ? Why 
not now — in your prosperity, in the flush and hey- 
day of your youth and vigorous manhood, while your 
mind is strong, and your body is able to do the very 
best work for God — why not exclaim, " Here, Lord, 
I am ; take me ; make me thine forever ? " Listen 
to the prophets ; listen, above all, to Christ and His 
apostles ; take His gentle reproofs and sweet and 
kind invitations ; obey His gracious command ; 



152 Living Words. 

come to Him and be saved. For, if you hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will you be per- 
suaded though one should rise from the dead. 

Nay, the means which God uses, instead of be- 
coming greater in relation to you, will rather become 
less every day. The appeal, founded upon the word 
of God, which ten years ago would have startled you, 
does not startle you now. The sermon which would 
then have made you prick up your ears, and in your 
heart determine to seek and obey God, that sermon 
passes idly by you now. The prayers of your par- 
ents, which ten or fifteen years ago you remembered 
with so much tenderness, are forgotten now. The 
law of God is the same, the promises of God the 
same, the power of Christ's cross the same ; the 
glory of heaven is the same, the darkness and tor- 
ture of hell the same. But you are changed ; you have 
become hardened ; you have less susceptibility to 
religious impressions, less of the Spirit of God, less 
of the religious element, less prospect of salvation. 
And so it will go on, unless you yield to God's 
mercy, and obey His Spirit, and say, " I yield ; the 
evidence is enough ; the means are enough ; I have 
had opportunities enough, and now I will turn to 
God and do His will." 



The Pastor s Joy. 153 



IX. 
THE PASTOR'S JOY. 

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. 
3 John 4. 



To understand these words, and their application in 
the case of John, we must remember that John was 
a Christian Pastor. He here speaks of his children, 
referring first, doubtless, to those who had been con- 
verted under his preaching, and then to those at- 
tending upon his ministry. The words are apt and 
fitting in the case of every true and faithful minis- 
ter of the Lord Jesus. The relations between the 
Pastor and his flock are intimate relations ; they are 
personal relations as well as official, and they are 
relations, too, quite different from the ordinary rela- 
tions of men to each other in society. The Pastor 
is the teacher of the flock, not the priest of the 
flock ; not their intercessor with God, not their me- 
diator. As I have often said in this place, so now I 
say again — for the truth on this point cannot be too 
frequently repeated — whenever a man comes to you 
professing to be a priest, or to stand between you 
and God in any sense whatever, distrust and doubt 



154 Living Words. 

that man. The Christian Pastor is a teacher, and 
guide, and ruler of the flock, in a certain sense ; in 
the very strongest sense, however, he is a minister 
of the flock ; that is to say, a servant of the flock. 
So, too, he is a teacher who does not volunteer his 
services. He is called of God to his work of the 
ministry ; called to be the witness of God, through 
His Church, through His providence, through His 
Spirit speaking to him and urging him to go forth 
and speak to the people ; and the people agree to 
this. It is every man's duty to propagate the Gos- 
pel. But not every man can teach ; not every man 
can devote his life to the study of the word of God. 
There are a great many duties to be discharged, a 
great deal of work to be done : farms to be tilled, 
commerce to be carried on, trade to be pursued — 
these are necessary to the very existence of society. 
There are secular studies and pursuits ; the most of 
mankind must be busy with these, and some must 
be set apart from the rest for the study of God's 
word and Gospel. And this theory of the relation 
between the Pastor and the flock is, I think, a very 
intelligible one. Further, the minister is not a mere 
teacher of human knowledge, but of divine knowl- 
edge. " We come to testify the Gospel of the grace 
of God." Now, if all this be true, there can be noth- 
ing mercenary in the relation between the Pastor 
and the flock ; if there is, the relation is a false one. 



The Pastor s Joy. 155 

The man who really feels himself called to preach 
the Gospel, if he have a true heart, gives up the or- 
dinary prizes of human life, and ought to give them 
up. He should be supported by the people, it is 
true, and relieved from all anxiety as to secular 
concerns ; supported decently, in proportion to the 
condition and capacity of his people. But the true 
minister of the Gospel gives up the ordinary prizes 
of life. The relations between the preacher and the 
people are founded upon kindness and love, and not 
upon ambition or money-making ; otherwise the text 
would have no aptness in its relation to a preacher 
of the Gospel. The ordinary prizes of life to men of 
great talent are very great — prizes of wealth, of dis- 
tinction, position, and what not. You all know these 
things very well. Some of you have achieved them 
in your own particular lines. As merchants, you 
may live as the princes of Tyre lived of old, and 
have control of all things that money can give. I, 
as a minister of the Gospel, give up the chance of 
this ; it cannot be mine. I do not want it to be 
mine ; I have other things to think of. Not that 
you are wrong, but I would be wrong if I pursued 
the same objects. A Christian minister must make 
up his mind in the beginning that these are not for 
him. He may gain prizes in reputation and fame, 
because in this thing, as in all other things, the 
ordinary laws of human nature must have their way ; 



156 Living Words. 

those men who have in them the elements of power, 
talent, and genius, will stand above their fellows. 
But a minister of the Gospel dare not, if he be a true 
man, look at these things as his reward — the prize 
toward which he is aiming. If a true man he can 
say to his flock in earnest, " I want not yours, but 
you ; I come among you for your good, and because 
my own soul cannot be saved unless I do ; because 
God has put a woe upon me if I preach not the 
Gospel ; because I have a mission of God to testify 
to you the Gospel of Christ." To such a man the 
words of my text are most fitting and beautiful, " I 
have no greater joy than to hear that my children, 
walk in truth." We have, then, in this text the 
sources of the faithful minister's highest joy. 

There is a great deal of beauty in this use of the 
term children ; it was especially beautiful in the 
mouth of the Apostle John. You remember how 
lovely and beautiful his character was ; how he stands 
out among the other apostles as the very type of 
true tenderness, gentleness, and affection. Paul had 
his great points, his noble energy and dauntless 
fidelity, but must yield to John in those lovelier 
attributes — attributes which have become so strongly 
characteristic of John's history that when we speak 
of a man unusually tender and affectionate we say 
his character was John-like. It is said that in the 
old age of this apostle — he lived to be a hundred 



The Pastor's Joy. 157 

years old, some accounts say a hundred and five, 
thus surviving the storms of the stormiest period of 
the . Christian Church — he used to be carried into 
the church Sunday after Sunday, and, when he could 
preach to his congregation no more, he would, at the 
conclusion of the services, raise up his hands, and 
give the same simple injunction, " My little chil- 
dren, love one another." The story is no doubt 
true, and it is perfectly characteristic of the beauti- 
ful life and writings of this apostle. 

The whole of the three epistles of John seem to 
have just these two thoughts, with various modifica- 
tions — truth and love. Upon these two poles, as it 
were, in the mind of the apostle, his mind revolved 
— truth and love. This epistle was written when he 
was perhaps ninety years of age. Looking over his 
whole life, having tested all that life had to give of 
trial on the on^ hand, and joy and triumph on the 
other, after having seen life in almost every possible 
phase and in the most splendid cities in the world, 
he says, " My greatest joy is to hear that my chil- 
dren walk in truth." " My children," that is to say, 
those that have been brought into the Church by 
my preaching, and have been trained by me as a fa- 
ther in the. Gospel in the way of everlasting life. 
" My greatest joy " — as a minister of the Gospel, so 
can every true man say that stands to preach the 
Gospel, is — what ? The applause of my hearers ? 



158 Living Words. 

the text does not say that ; the number of my hear- 
ers ? the text does not say that ; the wealth and 
earthly possessions of my hearers ? the text does, not 
say that. Not that these things are in themselves 
bad — I do not say so ; not that it is bad in a 
preacher to get the applause of his audience ; it is 
essential that he should get the ear of those who 
hear him, and it is proper, in the language of Eccle- 
siastes, to find out " acceptable words," so that peo- 
ple may be glad to listen to him when he unfolds the 
word of God. " My greatest joy," says John the elo- 
quent, who, before Chrysostom, might have been 
called the golden-mouthed, upon whose teachings 
the world hangs to this day as the most beautiful 
the Bible contains, " is " — not the applause of listen- 
ing multitudes, but — " to hear that my children walk 
in truth." The true minister of the Gospel is called 
of God to preach His Gospel wherever he can preach 
it ; whether it be in the grandest edifices erected for 
the worship of Almighty God, or in the humblest, or 
in no edifice at all ; in the woods, at the camp-meet- 
ing, or in the log-hut of some remote country dis- 
trict. The same thought is at the bottom of the 
preacher's effort — his duty to his people, and the 
work he has to do in testifying the Gospel of the 
grace of God, and trying to bring them to walk in 
the truth. "I have no greater joy than" — that my 
church be filled ? my congregation respectable ? my 



The Pastor's Joy. 159 

people wealthy ? Nothing of all this ; there is no 
such word in the whole Bible. Let these things 
come if they will, but not as the object of search. 
It is the glory of this Gospel that it is as fit for the 
poorest as for the richest ; that in the huts of pov- 
erty, as in the palaces of kings, these great truths 
are the same. That is a fine anecdote related of 
Louis XIV. and Massillon — when the latter had 
preached a grand sermon, and some one remarked 
upon it to the king, he replied, " I think not of 
that man ; but whenever I listen to him he makes 
me think of my soul and eternity." 

What does it mean, this walking in truth ? I 
have before expounded the term "walk" as imply- 
ing a habit of life. In the eighth chapter of the 
Romans we read of "walking not after the flesh, 
but after the Spirit." It means a habit of life, a 
continued tendency of manners, a mode of thought 
and feeling. It has more than one meaning, more 
than one application. For one thing, it means the 
knowledge of the outward, substantial body of truth, 
the Gospel of the grace of God, and that Jesus 
Christ is our Saviour ; or, as John says in the first 
of these small epistles which he wrote, "We know 
that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an 
understanding, that we may know Him that is true ; 
and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son 
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 



160 Living Words. 

And again in the second chapter of First John, "But 
ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know 
all things. I have not written unto you because ye 
know not the truth, -but because ye know it, and that 
no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that de- 
nieth that Jesus is the Christ?" What a terribly 
expressive interrogation that is — unbelief in Christ 
being the master sin, as I have told you so often. 
The very essence of all falsehood and all untruth is 
found to be this very same unbelief in Christ, sum- 
ming it all up into this one thing, that he that denieth 
Christ is the Antichrist, is a liar, and there are no 
other liars. " Whosoever denieth the Son, the same 
hath not the Father : but he that acknowledgeth the 
Son hath the Father also. Let that therefore abide 
in you, which you have heard from the beginning." 

To walk in the truth is to acknowledge Christ as a 
Saviour, to receive him as a Redeemer and source 
of all goodness and truth, to seek in him for all vir- 
tue, all power. A love of Christ and God in Christ : 
that is the substance of the doctrine of the Gospel ; 
it runs out into various branches — justification, sanc- 
tification, adoption, regeneration — but all these have 
their roots and ground in this, the belief of my soul 
in Jesus Christ as my Saviour ; that I hang upon him 
for the pardon of my sins, and trust in him for the 
purification of my life, seeking by continual intimacy 
with him to grow in grace and in the knowledge of 



The Pastors Joy. 161 

his truth. This is the doctrine of the Gospel of the 
Word of God. My children, do you walk in this 
truth ? Have you mastered all this wonderful mys- 
tery of God manifest in the flesh ? 

The outward doctrines of the Gospel, then, are part 
of the truth which you are to keep and cherish ; it is 
invaluable as a possession, this deposit of truth which 
God has given to his Church, and each man may 
have it for a possession. Oh how certain, how rich, 
how true a possession beyond all others is the truth 
that a man holds ! There is no other possession 
after all but those things which belong to our minds 
and hearts. These are the only things which we 
really possess. I do not possess my house, though 
I have a title-deed of it ; I call it mine. I have 
some lands perhaps, I do not possess them. I have 
the use of them for a time, but soon I shall be 
buried in six feet of earth. Men may call me a mill- 
ionaire ; what difference does it make ? I cannot 
carry these things beyond the grave. My posses- 
sions, those things which death cannot take from 
me, which neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor any other creature 
shall be able to separate me from — what are those 
things ? The truth of God, the love of God, the 
character that I have, not my reputation, but my in- 
ward character, founded upon my knowledge of God 

and relationship to Jesus Christ — these are mine; 

11 



1 62 Living Words. 

you cannot take me from them, the grave cannot 
separate me from them, they will go with me into 
the other world, and they shall be my everlasting 
treasure there. These are the gold and jewels of 
that better kingdom — the everlasting ornaments 
which never, never fade. 

But to walk in the truth implies more than this — 
it implies a heart-felt enjoyment and possession of 
the truth, not merely in the intellect, but in the 
heart. It is quite possible for the mind to be fur- 
nished with the formulas of the truth while the heart 
has no share in it ; to hold the truth and hold it in 
unrighteousness. And the general law is that the 
outward form of truth does not remain long in the 
mind of that man who does not allow it to go into 
his heart, or make use of it for the purification of his 
nature. It is with this as with secular knowledge ; 
the analogies of nature are wonderful all the way 
through. How is it with yourselves ? You learn a 
mathematical formula, the most simple in arithmetic 
or the most complicated in the highest calculus. 
Suppose it is that two and two make four ; if you do 
not take that truth and apply it constantly in your 
daily pursuits, if you let it remain as a barren doc- 
trinal statement, you forget it. You have learned a 
hundred lessons, which have passed through your 
mind as water through a sieve and never taken hold 
upon your habits or your heart. The human mind 



The Pastors Joy. 163 

is not a mere box to be filled, as we stuff a chest, 
with papers. It is only those lessons which are 
taken hold of by the heart and incorporated into the 
activities of the man in some way — either in the 
conduct of his business, trade, or profession, or in 
the whole conduct of his life, and become part and 
parcel of the man himself, which are substantial and 
unchanging truths for him. 

The love of the truth is a richer possession than the 
actual truth itself, because it will lead you to the truth 
and keep you in it ; but if you hold the truth with- 
out loving it, the end will be that you will lose even 
that possession. If you have the doctrine that 
Christ is the Saviour of men, make use of it by 
having Christ for your own Saviour ; if you have the 
doctrine of sanctification, make use of it by getting 
your own soul cleansed from sin and living in the 
purity of holiness. The truth at once seeks to turn 
itself into action, and all truth some day or another 
gets itself translated into an obvious and outward 
fact. It is the knowledge of this that strengthens 
the man of science in researches apparently the 
most remote from all practical utility. And yet the 
truly scientific man is the most practical man in the 
world. The man making analysis after analysis 
among gases and bits of clay, though ignorant peo- 
ple might suppose him crazed, is the most emi- 
nently practical man in the world. You will see by 



164 Living Words. 

and by the fruits of his research in some new ele- 
ment that contributes vastly to the comforts of hu- 
man life. Truth forces itself out into practice, and 
if it be not true for you individually, you have not 
held the truth honestly, and are not walking in the 
truth as you ought to do. The truth comes into 
practice because it seeks obedience. She enters my 
soul and yours as a queen, to rule there, not to obey. 
We kneel to her and obey her if we are true-hearted, 
while she sits there in her queenly robe and diadem 
of immortal gems. And while we kneel to no other 
monarch we are safe ; and not only that, but we are 
rich, for she does not sit very long ruling alone, but 
takes those gems of hers, those costly robes, and 
gives them to her subjects, surrounding them with 
all the blessings she can dispense. God himself has 
made obedience the test of truth. " If any man will 
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it 
be of God." 

The last chapter of the Revelation places this 
matter in the clearest light : in giving a list of those 
shut out of the eternal city, " without," says the book, 
" are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and 
murderers, and idolaters ;" and, when we think we 
have got to the acme of all possible sinfulness, we 
read, " and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie," as if 
that were the summing up of all transgression. 
And so it is. If there be no truth in a man there 



The Pastors Joy. 165 

is no basis on which you can work with him ; there 
can be no faith where there is no truth, either in 
society or in trade, for upon truthfulness all confi- 
dence depends. If there be no truth in a man we 
can do nothing with him, and he is only fit to be 
cast out with dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, 
and murderers, and idolaters, for he is as bad as any 
of them ; the very bottom that ought to sustain the 
fabric of virtue is gone. It is a great thing, which 
you cannot too much fix in your minds, that your 
personal veracity is a sure type and test of your 
whole character. Do not tell a lie, because to do so 
is to crucify your best nature before God ; for this is 
cutting off the very roots of all faith that you can 
have in yourselves, or that other men can have in 
you. Never tell a lie about any thing ; teach your 
children this first and last lesson. " I ask no greater 
joy than that my children walk in the truth." " Woe 
upon a lie ;" it comforts not the soul like the true 
spoken word ; it comforts not but tortures him that 
utters it. A lie is a fearful thing, and always brings 
back its curse to him that utters it. The South 
Sea Islanders have a weapon which they cast with 
such skill that it comes back to the very spot from 
which it is thrown ; and in the hands of an inex- 
perienced man it sometimes comes back so crush- 
ingly as to destroy. And so do the poisoned ar- 
rows which the liar sends forth come back, repulsed 



1 66 Living Words. 

by the shield of Almighty God, to poison his own 
soul. For God's sake walk in the truth, even in 
the smallest details of life, in your daily intercourse 
with men, in your own family. Do not promise your 
child to do a thing and then not do it ; do not tell 
your child a thing that is not true and let him think 
it is true. 

"To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

Truthfulness, what a glorious thing it is ! What has 
made Thomas Carlyle so great a man, the ruler, as 
it were, and inspirer of so many young minds ? The 
essence of that man's hold upon minds is that he has, 
or at least seems to have, a powerful instinctive rever- 
ence for the truth, and preaches it on every page ot 
his books, showing an invincible hatred of all false- 
hoods and shams. What a glorious thing truthful- 
ness of life is when we find it standing out in history ! 
The prince who befriended Luther, and took for his 
motto, " The word of God abideth forever," and had 
the initials of the motto put upon his shields and on 
the harness of his horses and the livery of his serv- 
ants, acted upon it in his court and his family, satis- 
fied that, whatever other things pass away, this one 
thing is true, " the word of the Lord abideth forever." 
When a man gets such a great truth as that impressed 
upon him and lives upon it, he walks in truth, because 



The Pastor s yoy. 167 

truth is the inspiration of his life. To walk in the 
truth, to avoid every thing like pretending to be 
what we are not, is the highest type of human char- 
acter. Here again, to my children in the Gospel, 
and particularly to the young people, I put this as 
one of your highest aims — always seem to be what 
you are, and do not try to seem to be what you are 
not. There is no greater source of discomfort and 
annoyance in private life than that of trying to be a 
little different from what we are. Seeming to be 
rich when we are not rich — what a ghastly, horrible 
life is this ! Trying for years and years to " keep up 
appearances," as it is called ; can you imagine any 
thing more terrible than this ? The outward show 
of upholstery, furniture of plush and velvet, while a 
man may be a bankrupt and a beggar ; what a mis- 
erable wretch ! and what he must suffer every day 
and every hour ! 

The man who begins life on false appearances is a 
type of those who do not take the truth of God into 
their hearts and work it out continually. They seem 
to be rich in good works, all the while knowing that 
they are bankrupt. The keeping up of appearances 
in this world will all soon be over, but the keeping 
up of spiritual appearances is everlasting damnation. 
A great deal of the misery of our social life in this 
city of New York comes from the perpetual aiming 
to be what we are not, and aping something that we 



1 68 Living Words. 

ought not to imitate at all. A great deal of our or- 
dinary every-day walking is walking not merely upon 
treacherous ashes, but, I had almost said, upon no 
ashes at all. Take one of the splendid houses in 
Fifth Avenue, and in passing along you will suppose 
here are magnificent structures, nobly planned and 
strongly built, of perpetually enduring stone. My 
poor friend, there is nothing but veneering of 
brown-stone there. And so in our architecture 
generally, we make grand outward displays that 
look as if they would stand perpetually, when they 
are only lath and plaster. The structure of a life 
that subsists on seeming for reality cannot be hon- 
est at bottom. 

And now what is the lesson of the text ? It is 
that we walk in the truth ; that we cherish it in 
our lives, in our habits, in the way in which we 
bring up our families, and in all our ways endeavor, 
according to God's laws, to walk in His simple 
truth. 

And now I speak feelingly of my relation to this 
flock, and especially to the younger members and 
younger converts in it. Before long I shall be leav- 
ing you, and this pulpit be occupied by another Pas- 
tor ; but when that time comes I shall long to know 
if these children of mine are walking in the truth, 
building up a pure, substantial character, endeavor- 
ing to be honest men and godly women, seeking to 



The Pastors Joy. 169 

keep love to God in their hearts, and to live in the 
truth and knowledge of God, continually adorning 
the doctrine of God our Saviour. Do not let your- 
selves be drawn away by a false world, which will 
soon be at an end for you and for me. The only 
perpetual possession is this truth ; treasure it up in 
your minds and hearts and work it out in your lives. 
If you find society false and hollow, do not let it 
affect you ; act no falsehoods in manner, in dress, in 
equipage, in trade. 

To the Christian parent my text comes with 
beauty and aptness. Is there nothing you desire 
for your own children so earnestly as that they walk 
in the truth ? Do you wish it to-day ? Most as- 
suredly you ought, if you are a Christian parent and 
your heart is filled with the love of God. Ask your- 
selves whether it has already been so ? whether you 
have not cherished for them wealth, distinction, so- 
cial position, more than you have the desire that 
they should walk in the truth. Can you say that 
you have been as earnest for the salvation of your 
children's souls as about their education, and that 
they should make a figure in society and do well in 
the world ? Let not Satan thus deceive, let not the 
world thus enslave you ; but seek for yourselves 
and your children that truth which is an everlast- 
ing possession, and say for them, as I say for you, 
" I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my 



170 Living Words. 

children walk in truth ; " that this truth should be 
truth of doctrine — that they should know their re- 
lation to God through Christ ; to love truth above 
all other things, and that their whole conduct and 
all their ways should be regulated by the love of 
God. 



Church Fellowship. 171 



x. 



CHURCH FELLOWSHIP. 

That there should be no schism in the body ; but that the members 
should have the same care one for another. And whether one mem- 
ber suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member be honored, 
all the members rejoice with it. — i Cor. xii, 25, 26. 



The word Church is ambiguous from the two mean- 
ings attached to it, which, if confounded together, 
produce necessarily perplexity and confusion. The 
Church is twofold, according to the statements of 
the New Testament : the . visible Church and the 
catholic Church — the latter being the universal 
Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, including all be- 
lievers in all lands, in all communities, under all 
possible forms. All true believers, however differing 
from each other in outward form, usages, and cere- 
monies, are members of the catholic Church. So in 
the creed which we all subscribe to as the simplest 
embodiment of Christianity — in that creed, rightly 
named the Apostles', we avow our belief in "the 
holy catholic Church, and in the communion of 
saints." In expressing that belief we express our 



172 Living Words. 

belief in that kingdom which is to be manifest upon 
the earth — which is to be seen, however, in its com- 
plete and perfect state only after the earth shall have 
become in full possession of Christ. This Church, to 
which the promises of God are given in their fullest 
extent — which is emphatically the body of Christ, 
and includes all the branches of the militant Church 
on earth, and shall hereafter include all those who 
shall finally triumph and become part of God's 
Church in heaven — this catholic Church, being in- 
visible, is not and cannot be known as such in any 
one body upon the earth ; God alone knows the 
heart, and he alone knows whether men professing 
to be his disciples are really so ; whether you who 
sit before me and I who preach to you are honest 
people or hypocrites. It is not for me to judge you, 
nor for you to judge me, except so far as "the out- 
ward actions of our lives show what we are. 

There may be growing side by side with the rich- 
est virtues of the Christian life the rankest vices that 
degrade humanity. So our Saviour, illustrating His 
doctrine in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of 
St. Matthew, in which the whole theory and history 
of the Church are set forth, declares that the king- 
dom of God is a leaven hid in meal, which goes on 
gradually developing itself, and permeating the meal 
more and more, until the whole mass is filled. 
Again He compares 7t to a grain of mustard-seed, 



Church Felloivship. 173 

which germinates according to the law of its nature, 
and becomes at last a great tree, filling all the air 
with its branches so that the birds of the air find a 
refuge in its shade. Again, it is like wheat which a 
man sows in the field ; scattered by the careful hand 
of the husbandman, it comes up according to its 
nature, and produces fruit ; at the same time tares, 
sown by the enemy while the man slept, come up, 
so close an imitation and perfect counterfeit that 
they must be grown up and fully matured before 
their real character can be known. 

All these parables illustrate the character and na- 
ture of the Church of God. In the one class of 
parables the whole Church is spoken of; that Church 
which is to go on from conquest to conquest until 
at last every knee shall bow and every tongue con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the 
Father ; that invisible Church to which, if we are 
true Protestants and Christians, we all cling, loving 
it none the less that it is invisible, that it has no 
proud hierarchy, sways no material sword, aims at 
no outward dominion ; that Church of the Lord 
Jesus, his kingdom and royal dwelling-place, which 
has stood thus far and shall stand forever ; for the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. But the 
visible Church is sometimes evidently advancing, 
sometimes apparently going back again. The king- 
dom is founded upon the earth and among men, and 



J 74 Living Words. 

although there is one point of difference between it 
and earthly things, there are others of likeness 
In the visible Church there have been at all times, 
and there probably will be till the millenium, tares 
as well as wheat. Yet the kingdom of God is a 
divine idea, and as such is sure to be realized. 
Though it may appear to die out, there is always a 
remnant left ; there are always so many righteous 
men who do not bow the knee to Baal ; there is 
always the leaven that shall at last leaven the whole 
lump. 

What are the object and the value of the privi- 
leges of this visible Church ? What are the duties 
of its members ? It is to answer these questions 
that we shall address ourselves briefly this morning, 

First, as to the value of the privileges of the 
Church ; and, 

Second, as to the duties of those who are mem- 
bers of this Church. 

The privileges are not what some men suppose 
them to be — what even the mass of mankind for a 
long series of ages supposed them to be. The 
Church of God is typified as a kingdom, but it is not 
an earthly kingdom. The very temptation to which 
Christ, the founder, was subjected upon the moun- 
tain was that he should endeavor to make His king- 
dom an earthly one. How his disciples longed that 
he should ! They went on from year to year looking 



Church Fellowship. 175 

for some manifestation of this intention, and hoping 
the day should come when he would be King of Is- 
rael. Satan took him up into an exceeding high 
mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the 
earth and the glory thereof, and said unto him, " All 
these will I give unto thee if thou wilt fall down and 
worship me." You know how the offer was repelled 
by Him upon whom no stain of sin ever rested. 
But the temptation has been reproduced in many an 
age since in the history of the Church, and she has 
not rejected it as Christ did. When the imperial 
dignity rested for the first time upon a Christian 
then was the temptation successful. For gene- 
ration after generation, age after age, was this temp- 
tation presented to the Church — now repelled, now 
accepted — until at last it appeared as if every-where 
power was in the hands of the Church, and there 
were enthroned one man who held the consciences 
of all others in his hand. The building up of the 
Roman Catholic Church was one of the grandest 
achievements of human intellect in all ages ; of hu- 
man intellect assisted by the devil — for it took him, 
with all his years of experience, to build up that 
glorious and stupendous fabric : it was built upon a 
sham, and founded upon sands. The bargain was 
struck. "All these things will I give unto thee." 
The power and grandeur of Italy, the intellect and 
activity of France, the majesty and might of Spain, 



176 Living Words. 

the solidity and wealth of Germany, all broad and 
vast Europe was offered to the Church if the Church 
would only fall down and worship. I say it not in 
bitterness or anger, but in sorrow and humiliation, 
this was the bargain, and this the result. 

The Church is not a great corporation with magi- 
cal powers, into which, if a man enter, he is saved. 
The Church of Jesus Christ, according to the simple 
definition of our own creed, is a congregation of 
faithful men in which the pure word of God is 
preached, and the sacraments duly administered, 
according to Christ's ordinance. This is the visible 
Church of God. It includes individual congrega- 
tions, its extent being unlimited except by the limits 
of the habitable globe, for in the parable of the tares 
Christ tells us the field is the world. The Church 
and the world are to be co-extensive. 

The object of communion is not the attainment 
of some magical and mystical benefit derived from 
being in connection with the Church. The mere 
being in the Church does not protect a man in and 
of itself, and apart from the use of its privileges and 
means of grace. What are these privileges ? " And 
he gave some, apostles ; and some, prophets ; and 
some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; 
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the 
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ : till 
we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the 



Church FellowsJiip. 177 

knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ ;" as we read in the Ephesians. What are 
the ends of the Church ? It is for edification that 
Christian men are gathered, Christian societies 
founded, and the Christian Church diffused from 
neighborhood to neighborhood until it overruns the 
world. It is for our personal, mutual, common edi- 
fication as members of the Church — the Christian 
man rising up into the fulness of the stature of 
Christ. 

How is this edification to be gained in the Church ? 
What special advantages does the Church afford by 
its communion ? In the first place it affords us the 
use of the means of grace given to the Church, and 
by the Church to us. These means of grace are 
spoken of in the ordinances of our own Church. 
They are, " The public worship of God ; the ministry 
of the word, either read or expounded ; the Supper 
of the Lord ; family and private prayer ; searching 
the Scriptures ; fasting or abstinence." And of all 
who enter the Church it is expected that they have a 
desire for salvation, to " shun evil and do good." 

Public worship is the first privilege. That we wor- 
ship God together — is it not a privilege ? What a 
privilege it is for us to be gathered this morning 
in this temple, calm, quiet, peaceful as it is, and 

commune together with songs of thanksgiving, and 

12 



178 Living Words. 

have our hearts uplifted in prayer to God, and listen 
to His most holy word ! There is something ele- 
vating in the very conception of such an assemblage. 
You are not bound to be here ; you are getting no 
earthly gain by coming here week after week thus 
to commune together. Why do you come ? Why are 
you here ? I come, you will say, because I cannot 
stay away ; I come because my heart yearns for the 
communion of saints, because I feel that in this 
blessed fellowship with the saints of God, joining in 
their anthems of praise and worship, and uniting in 
common prayer, and listening with them to the voice 
of the minister setting forth God's Gospel, my spirit- 
ual life is strengthened, and I can say with the 
Psalmist, "A day in Thy courts is better than a thou- 
sand ! " Or you may say, I come because I dare not 
stay away, because it is my duty to worship, and be- 
cause I feel condemned if I do not. Well, I rejoice 
that you come even for this reason ; but the very 
fact that you come with this sense upon you, and this 
only, shows that you are not fully up to the Gospel 
standard, you do not fully enjoy the worship of God. 
You come because you cannot stay away. You ad- 
mit a sense of duty, and attempt to live up to it, but 
you are not up to the measure of the stature of 
Christ. But you will ask, Is this a special privilege 
of the Church, to come and unite in this worship ? 
Cannot all persons come and unite in this worship ? 



Church Fellowship. 179 

Unquestionably that is true, and part of the worship 
is arranged for the benefit of those who do not be- 
long to the Church. If they will join in our prayer 
and listen to our worship they are welcome. What 
special advantage, then, you may say, is there in my 
being a member of the Church? — How long will 
these privileges last for you or sinners ? How many 
churches would be open for worship if there were no 
members ? How would this church have been here 
if there had not been men to push on this and other 
enterprises for the benefit of God and his kingdom ? 
It is because there are Churches enjoying an organic 
existence, having a corporate life, that these privi- 
leges exist, that this church stands. This house is 
open because the Church exists. The public worship 
of God depends upon the existence of the Church. 

There are other services included in this ordi- 
nance — special meetings for the edification of the 
body of believers — which are not open to the public 
at large nor intended for their benefit. There is the 
class-meeting as a special means of grace, a social 
means of grace, which, as far as it is peculiar to us, af- 
fords the members of the Church a special and peculiar 
advantage — the meeting for Christian communion 
and confession, in which the social and religious 
virtues can and ought to be closely cemented and 
largely developed. Does the Church make attend- 
ance upon these meetings obligatory ? you will ask, 



180 Living Words. 

and you may say, you have no right to make any 
such rule as this. I am not so sure about that ; 
let us look at it. The Church enjoins upon you 
to attend public worship ; that is one of the laws 
of the Church, and if you are found absenting your- 
self from public worship Sunday after Sunday, month 
after month, and year after year, the Church will 
bring her Discipline to bear upon you for this viola- 
tion of her laws, and, if you persist in neglecting 
public worship, you will be punished by admonition 
or expulsion. The same will be the case if you per- 
sist in neglecting the Lord's Supper. What right 
has the Church to do this ? You may say the Scrip- 
tures provide for them, and declare that we must do 
these things. The Scriptures do not declare that 
you must come into a place like this and worship in 
these forms. The Scriptures declare nothing as to the 
manner in which these duties are to be discharged ; 
nor in regard to the communion, that it shall be held 
once a month, or once a year, or once in five years ; 
nothing specific is laid down about it. But the Church 
enjoins certain duties of public worship and commun- 
ion, and is allowed to hold her members up to that 
standard. There is nothing wrong or arbitrary in 
this. The Church provides that these duties shall 
be performed in a certain way, and that class-meet- 
ings shall be held in a certain way, just as she 
provides that public worship shall be done in a 



Church FcllozvsJiip. 181 

certain way, and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
observed in a certain way and at certain times. If 
these be right, the Church has a right to make 
attendance upon any form of devotion compulsory 
which can be considered carrying out the will of God. 
The Church never says strictly that if you are not in 
your place in church every Sunday morning you 
shall be excluded, or unkss you attend communion 
once a month or class-meeting once a week you shall 
be expelled. There is no such strictness as this 
about any of the rules of the Church, because such 
strictness would not be in accordance with the exam- 
ple of Christ and his apostles ; their example was 
forbearance and goodness. The value of class-meet- 
ings consists in the opportunity they give for self-ex- 
amination and self-scrutiny, so necessary in order to 
a growth in grace,. and the opportunities they afford 
of Christian union ; as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, 
" Now therefore ye are no more strangers and for- 
eigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the 
household of God." These class-meetings grew up 
out of certain religious societies of the Church of En- 
gland which originated ninety years before Wesley's 
time among men and women determined to seek a 
higher degree of godliness than seemed to prevail 
in society around them, or even in the Church. 
Wesley was brought into connection with these socie- 
ties in a providential way, and he adopted them, and 



1 82 Living Words. 



<i 



they became one of the great safeguards of the Meth- 
odist Church and a chief source of its strength. 

We now come to the duties which devolve upon 
all who enter this communion and enjoy this fellow- 
ship. 

The first duty will be to make use of these privi- 
leges for personal salvation. The privileges we have 
named give you an opportunity, for instance, for ob- 
taining a knowledge of Christian doctrine. We are 
here Sunday after Sunday to expound the doctrines 
of the Gospel. Take heed that you learn the Gos- 
pel doctrine as you hear it preached, and learn it from 
the word of God put into your hands. The Meth- 
odist scheme of doctrine is very simple, very broad 
and comprehensive. Methodism originated not in 
questions of doctrine, but in relation to the practical 
duty of a religious life. Methodism is but a revival 
of religion, and was so in its beginnings; and' is 
intended to be, in its whole history, a revival of primi- 
tive godliness. As such, the question of doctrine is 
not the fundamental requirement. The Articles of 
Religion in our Church are twenty-five in number. 
You will be surprised, if you have never examined 
them before, that there is no controversial question 
involved in them but that with the Romish Church. 
These twenty-five ordinances are taken out of the Ar- 
ticles of the Church of England, some of the Articles 
of that Church being left out. Predestination is 



Church Fellowship. 183 

omitted, and the question left open, as far as these 
ordinances of religion are concerned ; and so with 
other questions. Take in connection with this state- 
ment the life of John Wesley ; he did not ask if a 
man believed in predestination, or final perseverance, 
or depravity, but, " Do you believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ as a Saviour ? Do you believe yourself to be a 
sinner, and are you willing to receive Christ as your 
Saviour ?" 

The substance of doctrine is the great dogma of 
justification by faith, and the doctrine which flows out 
of it — the divinity of Christ. If we must be saved 
by justification Christ must be divine to save us. It 
is not into controverted questions that I care to lead 
you. Do not trouble your heads about predestina- 
tion, and questions of metaphysics, which belong to 
the region of philosophy, and ought to be taken out 
and kept out of the arena of religion. We are endowed 
with will to repent, and knowledge that we are all 
sinners and need a Saviour, and that Jesus Christ is 
ready to be our Saviour and will save all that come 
to God through him. In the providence of God it 
has come to be considered that the Methodist Church 
is intrusted with two doctrines — the doctrine of the 
witness of the Spirit, and that of Christian perfection. 
They are not doctrines in the strictest sense of the 
word ; they are not theories or dogmas at all. No dog- 
matic statement is needed of the fact that when a 



184 Living Words. 

Christian man is received into the favor of God he 
receives the witness of it himself ; the Holy Spirit 
witnesses to his spirit that he is a child of God. 
This doctrine is as old as the Church of England — 
you will find it in her dogmas ; as old as the Church 
of Rome — you will find it in the lives of the saints 
who in the dark ages shone like lights in a benighted 
land ; you will find it in the writings of Augustine, 
Cyprian, Tertullian ; it is as old as Paul, and is taught 
by Christ to his disciples : " The wind blovveth where 
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth : so is 
every one that is born of the Spirit." This doctrine 
is the doctrine of the Church, and you will find it illus- 
trated in practice by every Christian Church — at 
least by all with whose members I have ever come in 
contact. 

The doctrine of Christian perfection is on the same 
basis. We are bound to love God with our whole soul ; 
bound to take God at his word when he says, " Be ye 
perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is per- 
fect." There are two errors into which this exhorta- 
tion may lead you : one is to think despondently that 
it is utterly impossible to attempt to approach such a 
standard ; and the other is, to excuse your faults by 
saying it is impossible to be a perfect Christian. 
You have no right to lower the standard of Chris- 
tianity, and it is perilous to yourself to do it. Never 



Church Fellowship. 185 

dare to say that what God enjoins is impossible, or 
that he sets before us a model he does not mean us 
to follow. Set before yourself the highest model, 
and let no failure hide it from your view. 

Another duty is for every member of the Church 
to promote the well-being of the Church. You are 
taught of God to love one another ; as Christians we 
are bound to a special regard for each other. The 
spirit of Christianity is a harmonizing spirit as well 
as an elevating one. It was thought a great man- 
ifestation of the power of the Gospel in old times 
when the rich man and the poor man could be found 
worshiping together. Travelers in France, Ger- 
many, and Italy speak of the beauty of seeing upon 
the stone floors of those grand cathedrals the prince 
and pauper kneeling side by side, each recognizing 
the common Father, the difference in rank and wealth 
being forgotten. It is not the outward form of this 
harmony and equality which is truly beautiful, but 
the inward fellowship and the sense that all men 
before God are alike — the inward communion fostered 
by a spiritual religion. 

I enjoin it upon you, then, that you cultivate this 
inward spirit ; that you love your neighbor in the 
Church, whether a poor or rich man ; that you do 
not shun him because of his riches if you are poor, 
nor because of his poverty if you are rich. All these 
things are accidental ; in the fellowship of the Church 



1 86 Living Words. 

we are all rich together, because we are heirs of God, 
and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. What does it mat- 
ter to me, then, if my next door neighbor, a godly 
man, be a poor man ? if he be clothed in linsey and 
I clad in silk ? He may have treasures in heaven 
which will outvalue all of mine. 

We are to labor not merely for our personal good, 
but also for the spread of the Gospel. All should do 
what they can to hasten the coming of Christ's king- 
dom, as illustrated in that beautiful psalm containing 
what would seem to some a strange sentiment to 
come out of the mouth of a Jew — so full of rich and 
broad and genial generosity, so unlike the supposed 
closeness and narrowness of the Jewish mind — " God 
be merciful unto us, and bless us ; that thy way may 
be known upon earth, thy saving health among all na- 
tions." When we pray that God will be merciful to 
us, and pour out upon us all his endless graces and 
enlarge our borders, our prayers come back upon 
ourselves ; but how different when we ask these fa- 
vors to the end that God may be known upon all the 
earth ! You are, as members of the Church, to 
labor for its advancement; you are enlisted in this 
army of Christ, and are bound to fight that Christ 
may be the victor. Go to class-meeting and prayer- 
meeting, and all such assemblages ; it is not only 
a privilege, but a duty. You may feel indisposed 
to go ; there may be other things which seem 



Church Fellowship. 187 

to be more attractive claiming your attention ; 
but be faithful in all things. He that is faithful 
in small matters will be faithful in great ones, 
and he that is not faithful in these, how can he 
be trusted in great things ? 



1 88 Living Words, 



XL 

THE IMPORT OF THE SUPPER. 

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show 
the Lord's death till he come. — i Cor. xi, 26. 



I purpose this morning speaking of the Lord's Sup- 
per. I can only do this in certain aspects of the sub- 
ject, because to treat of it in full, in its nature and in 
its relation to the Church and to the individual, 
would require a whole series of sermons. Every 
name we give it implies a different aspect. We 
call it the Eucharist — a feast of thanksgiving; the 
Lord's Supper — that is to say, a feast in which we 
have communion with Christ at his own invitation. 
There are a great many names, and each of them is 
significant. 

A preliminary remark upon the sacraments of the 
Gospel : We have two sacraments — Baptism, and the 
Lord's Supper. There were two rites in the old dis- 
pensation to which these correspond — Circumcision, 
and the Passover ; the one the rite of initiation, and 
the other the rite of confirmation. There must be 
such rites as these in every religious organization, 



The Import of the Supper. 189 

and there is something analogous to them in every 
form of organization. The right of initiation under 
the old law was circumcision, performed once, and 
once only, upon a subject who was a mere passive 
recipient. So the rite of baptism in the New Testa- 
ment is performed once, and once only, and upon a 
passive recipient. There is nothing voluntary about 
the sacrament considered in itself; the subject re- 
ceives the baptism — the effusion of the water, the 
pouring of it or the immersion in it — by some other 
hand. On the contrary, the rite of confirmation un- 
der the old law was the passover, which included cer- 
tain acts on the part of the partaker, as well as the 
outward and visible elements of the sacrament itself. 
The lamb had to be procured and slain, and was 
then roasted and eaten : all these implying voluntary 
acts of the participant. So in this sacrament there 
is God's part in providing the elements and con- 
stituting them what they are ; and, on the other 
hand, the participation of the voluntary communi- 
cants who go to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
and partake of the emblems of the sacrament — eat 
and drink them. This little simple statement, if you 
will carry it home and think about it, will put aside 
many of the strange and difficult questions which 
have got about these two. sacraments of baptism and 
the Lord's Supper. The one is the rite of initiation, 
and the other the rite of confirmation. You can very 



190 Living Words. 

easily see, if it be discussed whether children or 
grown people are to be baptized — whether by sprink- 
ling, or pouring, or immersion — how trifling these 
differences are when compared with the real sub- 
stance. They are akin to the disputes as to whether 
the bread should be leavened or unleavened, whether 
the wine should be fully pressed or fermented, or 
drunk from cups of silver or glass. All these are 
minor questions. We are to be baptized by water, 
and the form matters not ; we are invited to com- 
munion with the Lord Jesus, and the materials are 
simple bread and wine. And if the sacrament is 
in that form, the other things are minor and of no 
importance. 

Let us contemplate the real substance of this sac- 
rament for us as Christian people. 

I. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper looks back 
upon the past, and in that sense is a memorial. 

II. It has relation to the present time and our 
present personal condition, and in this sense is a 
means of grace. 

III. It looks forward prophetically to the future, 
and in this sense is a pledge of everlasting life to all 
who worthily partake of it. 

This sacrament looks back upon the past, and in 
this sense is a memorial. It is a commemorative 
ordinance. Commemorative of — what ? Of that for 
the very purpose of which it was instituted — the cir- 



The Import of the Supper. 191 

cumstances under which it was instituted. Ah, how 
apt we are to forget our benefactors ! How apt we 
are to forget even those that we love ! Take that 
single sentence home now and see if it is not so. 
Ten or twenty years ago you buried some one out of 
your sight, and it seemed as if the very light of your 
life were gone — a light that could never come back 
again ; and you said so — that it should be never more. 
And yet that loved image now stands away back in 
the distance, dim and shadowy, and it is only when 
some memorial, some type, some sign, some sacra- 
ment brings back the recollection, that the old love 
is felt. It is not gone, I admit ; but we are so apt 
to forget. And so we forget our greatest benefactors. 
Mankind are prone to remember those that hurt them, 
rather than the benefactor who brings blessings at 
every step of his path in life. 

Hack a tree with an ax, and the scar remains for 
ages. The circles that gather around in the effort 
of nature to obliterate it seem more and more to 
perpetuate it. But the care of the gardener who 
planted it, who watched and watered it, that is all 
forgotten. So it is with men. Even that great sacri- 
fice of Christ upon the cross, the purchase of our 
redemption by that bitter death, even the circum- 
stances of that death itself, we are apt to forget un- 
less perpetually reminded. And so, in this aspect, 
the very institution of the Lord's Supper is a kind 



192 Living Words. 

condescension on the part of God to our weakness 
and infirmity ; and whenever the Church administers 
the sacrament, whether once a month or once a week, 
it is intended as a sign, a memorial, a picture of the 
Lord Jesus, a painting of the crucifixion, a sculpture 
for us, if our imaginative faith be strong enough to 
take in all the scene upon Calvary. Nay, more, not 
merely a painting or statue, but bringing back again, 
if our eye of faith be strong enough to see it, the 
living, breathing, suffering, dying Saviour as he hung, 
there upon the cross, with the blood still flowing 
through his veins and arteries strong and quick as in 
the flush of his manly life ; then as it ebbed away 
and he became weaker and weaker, paler and paler, 
until at last he died. This sacrament is thus meant 
to be a memorial and bring back to us the day of 
our Saviour's death, the nights of his humiliation in 
the grave. " This do in remembrance of me." 

There is special fitness in the matter of the insti- 
tution as well as in the form : in the bread and wine 
which constitute the matter of the sacraments. The 
bread — we take it, and it is broken, and we eat it ; 
the wine — it is poured out, and we drink it. And 
what are these ? The bread, how is it made ? That 
bread cannot be made for you every day as the nour- 
ishment for your physical frame, except at this ex- 
pense : the beautiful grain must be taken at its 
maturity, the beautiful head of wheat must be rudely 



The Import of the Supper. 193 

cut down, and then it passes into the hands of the 
laborer, or under the hoof of the horse, or beneath 
the thrashing-flail, or into the pressure of the ma- 
chine, until it is stripped of its husk, and life is en- 
tirely taken from it so far as outward and material 
instruments can do it, and then it is put between the 
upper and nether millstone and ground to powder. 
And that is not all. You must take it and cause the 
elements of death to show themselves ; the putrefac- 
tion of fermentation must begin before you can have 
the light, beautiful, life-preserving bread. And so 
with the wine. You cannot get the mantling wine, 
with its beautiful color and refreshing properties, 
except by taking the grape in the full blush of its 
bloom and richness, and cutting it from the vine, and 
subjecting it to pressure, and after that to fermenta- 
tion, that out of destruction and death shall be 
brought the life -producing, life-preserving wine. 

So it is with our Lord and Saviour. He lived ; 
but if he had only, lived there would have been no 
life for us. He lived and died upon the cross that 
you and I might live ; that is to say, this bread of 
God came down from heaven to be our nourishment. 
It had to be cut off in its full bloom, to be subject to 
the flail, to the pressure and power of the mill, to be 
ground between the upper and the nether millstone, 
to be laid in the grave, and the beginning of its 

corruption to appear, and then its resurrection ; 

13 



194 Living Words. 

and now it is possible for Christ to be the living 
bread coming down from heaven, and whoever eats 
of it shall live for evermore. The bread and the wine 
are alike emblematic of the strength which the Church 
receives, and through her each individual member, 
from this blessed communion with Christ, which we 
commemorate when we partake of the Supper of the 
Lord. So we commemorate his sorrows and suffer- 
ings in this way for our own sake. And how rich a 
blessing is it that such a commemoration is given ! 

And further, our faith in Christ is excited by these 
emblems, as he is " evidently set forth among us cru- 
cified and slain." If we come to this sacrament 
remembering what this bread and wine are an emblem 
of, and our hearts are filled with it, this passage will be 
true, that here, as we surround the altar of God, 
" Christ is visibly set forth among us crucified and 
slain," for "visibly" is what is meant by the word 
" evidently" in the passage ; the effect of the memorial 
being to bring us back to the cross, to bring the cross 
down to us. That is the effect of it if we come with a 
living and true faith to partake of the blessed sacra- 
ment. By this commemoration we feel the dripping 
blood of Christ as if we had sat under his cross ; the 
anguish of those pains we feel as if we had seen 
them on Calvary. The spear that pierced my Sav- 
iour's side has rotted long ago ; the cross on which 
they hung him has passed away, gone into corruption ; 



The Import of the Slipper. 195 

but the water and blood that flowed on the piercing 
of his side by the soldier — the terror and anguish and 
pain that he endured upon that bitter cross — all these 
are as fresh as if the cross had been reared but yes- 
terday, and Christ hung upon it to-day. Our faith 
brings them to us, because the efficacy of that cross 
and of Christ's redemption is an everlasting efficacy. 
There is another aspect of this commemorative 
feature of the sacrament to which I must call your 
attention : " As often as ye eat this bread and 
drink this cup ye do show the Lord's death till he 
come." We show it as an historical testimony of 
the fact of his death. Every time the followers of 
Jesus Christ gather around his table and partake of 
the bread and wine as emblems of his broken body 
and shed blood, they add an additional evidence to 
the truth of the Gospel history. This ordinance is a 
perpetual memorial and proof of the facts of Christ's 
death, and the professed objects of it. Can you find 
a day in history, from the day of Christ's institution 
of this sacrament the night before he died, on which 
it has not been observed ? No single week has rolled 
away these eighteen hundred and thirty years — no 
single week has rolled away, since the hour of Christ's 
consecration of the bread and wine of this ordinance 
until now, in which there has not been a gathering to 
testify to this truth. There gather a few of them 
sadly and in tears within a few days after the death 



ig6 Living Words. 

of the Saviour. They gather in stronger numbers 
and with stronger hopes after the day of Pentecost, 
and so the bread is broken and the wine poured out 
and Christ remembered, and his death borne witness 
to. So, then, brethren, we too are as historical wit- 
nesses to the fact of Christ's death, and every time we 
come here we add one new stone to the great fabric of 
Christian evidence, one new testimony to the truth 
of this Gospel. There is something, to my mind, 
very striking and very beautiful in this one single 
evidence of the truth of Christianity — that you can- 
not point to any other beginning of this sacrament 
than that recorded, and that there is no stronger his- 
torical proof of any event than the commemoration in 
honor of it. Such is our Fourth of July ; and if it 
should be only celebrated as it is, once in each year, 
yet at the end of ten thousand years the force of it as 
a testimony would be just as great as it is now, unless 
some one could point to the day when it was instituted 
without foundation. In history testimony of this kind 
is considered better than almost any other. But we 
do more than this as witnesses, and not only testify to 
the fact of Christ's death, but testify to it with praise 
and approbation. The cross of the Lord Jesus was 
to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks 
foolishness ; but to us who believe, it is the power of 
God unto salvation ; that is to say, as often as we 
eat of this bread and drink this wine, we show the 



The Import of the Supper. . 197 

death of the Lord until he come, and in coming around 
this altar we come to say, What ? That the cross of 
Christ is no longer a stumbling-block or foolishness, 
that to us the offense of the cross is taken away 
forever ; not merely that it is not offensive, but that it 
is our crowning glory that we have a right to come 
to it and say, with a higher emphasis than Paul said, 
" I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ ; for it is 
the power of God unto salvation to every one that be- 
lieveth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." And 
when we surround this altar we come as witnesses 
to a fact and to the glory of a fact, each of us taking 
up the strain, and saying, " I joy and glory in the cross 
of Christ ;" each one of us says, " I testify to the 
power of the religion of the Redeemer ;" each one of 
us says as Paul says, and with a higher emphasis, 
" God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified 
unto me, and I unto the world." 

The second aspect of the sacrament is its relation 
to the present as a means of grace. Christ died, and 
we commemorate the sacrifice ; but more than this, he 
rose again, and is with us here, a living Saviour. 
Bread and wine come again in types, types of the 
nourishment of life and its preservation, We have in 
this sacrament the communion of his body and blood, 
which nourishes and sanctifies us in this life and pre- 
pares us for everlasting life in heaven, 



Living Words. 



The tree of life which stood in the garden of Eden 
was sacramental, and to eat of the tree was the law of 
the preservation of life under the Adamic covenant. 
The covenant was this : " Eat and thou shalt live. 
Here is the tree of life ; the matter of this sacrament 
is the fruit of this tree, and thou shalt eat of it and 
shalt live." When Adam was banished the sacrament 
was revoked, the tree of life was guarded by cherubim 
•with flaming swords turning every way. But under 
the promise that Christ should come again, under all 
dispensations — Abrahamic and Mosaic — all the way 
along up to the time when Christ instituted the Lord's 
Supper, you will find some sacrament, some sign be- 
tween God and man. The tree of paradise was the 
antitype of the paschal blood that saved Israel's first- 
born in the hour when the angel of death passed over 
Egypt ; of the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire 
by night ; of the manna that sustained them in the 
desert, and of the passover established in the promised 
land and kept up until the coming of the Lord Jesus. 
The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was substituted 
for the passover. Christ our Passover is slain for 
us. All these were in their time means of grace, 
comforting and sustaining. The Israelite was likely 
to doubt the strength and willingness of God to carry 
him onward, but could be convinced by Moses sud- 
denly pointing upward, " See there ! behold that 
rising vapor as it curls above the marching million** 



The Import of the Stepper. 199 

of Israel, and then no longer doubt ! " So in the hour 
of night and darkness the same leader and guide 
'could tell him, " See there ! behold that pillar of fire, 
beginning over the ark, ascending, and widening as 
it ascends! That. is the type and pledge of God's 
promise to his people." And so in all ages the 
natural heart of man has seen in the rainbow span- 
ning the sky the type of God's attributes of mercy 
and grace, and all people in all ages have looked up 
to that unimaginable beauty as a sacrament between 
God and man, an assurance that God's blessing should 
never more fail to mankind. 

In the Lord's Supper we come to refresh our- 
selves more than the Israelites could in sight of the 
cloud and fire, and be fed more than they could by 
the manna, for our celestial manna is the bread of 
this sacrament, and whosoever eateth and drinketh 
in the name of the Lord Jesus eateth and drinketh to 
his -salvation. " The cup of blessing which we bless, 
is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ? 
The bread which we break, is it not the communion 
of the body of Christ ? " How can this be true ? It 
is really and literally true that in coming to this com- 
munion Christ is actually and substantially to be 
partaken of by those who believe on him. I do not 
mean that the bread and wine are turned into the 
physical body of the Lord Jesus. What a delusion 
that is that any thing is substantial that can be seen 



200 Living Words. 

and touched ! The least substantial are those that 
can be seen or touched. The substance of this out- 
ward physical form is that which we cannot see. 
We do not even know what it is. Take the substance 
of the oak wood or pine wood. You do not know 
what the substance of it is at all ; you know 
certain outward properties which it possesses, but 
that is all. Christ is really and substantially pres- 
ent with his children in this sacrament. Though we 
do not see him, or eat of his body in a tangible 
and physical sense, or drink of his blood, yet we do 
really find our Saviour in those memorials of him. 
Let me illustrate this by a single case out of the 
Gospel. Our Saviour, passing through a great crowd 
of people, suddenly said, " Who is it that touched me, 
for I find virtue has gone out of me ? " Yet no one 
had touched his person, his face, or hands, or feet, or 
any part of his body. It was nothing but a poor 
woman who had taken hold of the outer edge of his 
long robe, perhaps four or five feet from his person ; 
only the hem of his garment was touched, and yet 
the touch brought life to her, and the Saviour knew 
it, and said, " Some one hath touched me." So when 
we come to surround this table, and come so near to 
Christ as to take the emblems of his body and blood, 
we are nearer than to be touching the very hem of 
his garment. If we have faith to believe it, our 
Saviour is with us. 



The Import of the Supper. 20 1 

We are nourished in our souls, in our love for him ; 
in our purposes of good, and get ourselves strength- 
ened to bear the ills, temptations, and shocks of life, 
and to prepare for death and judgment. And so we 
have often found a means of grace in this commun- 
ion. When our faith is strong in it 

"Our spirits drink a fresh supply, 
And eat the bread so freely given, 

Till, borne on eagle's wings, we fly, 

And banquet with our Lord in heaven." 

If there be a doubting Thomas in the congregation 
who has never been able fully to realize our Lord, 
and has been going for years with his head bowed 
down, I say come to the communion, to the altar of 
God> if you are willing to see Him. Do this in re- 
membrance of Christ, and open your eyes, and you 
shall see the hole caused by the spear of the soldier, 
and put your hand in it ; you shall see the wounds 
in his hands and feet ; you shall see him with his 
body broken and crushed for you, and you shall be 
led to say, " My Lord and my God." Come, and let 
this communion be for you the means of grace. 
How many have felt in surrounding this altar not 
only their own resolutions renewed, but the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost renewed, fresh power given to 
them, and that the mysterious manifestation of grace 
in the sacrament has renewed their faith as followers 
of Christ. 



202 Living Words. 

Looking toward the future, we find in this sac- 
rament a pledge of glory and everlasting life. " He 
said unto them With desire I have desired to eat this 
passover with you before I suffer : for I say unto 
you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be ful- 
filled in the kingdom of God. And He took the 
cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide 
it among yourselves : for I say unto you, I will not 
drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom 
of God shall come." There Christ institutes this 
supper, and tells His followers that it is His supper 
and His supper of communion, but that he will drink 
it no more with them until the fulfillment of the king- 
dom of God. Then he will drink it and join them again 
in it ; then an everlasting supper will be renewed — 
an everlasting supper of the Lamb — and not till then. 
"As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup 
you do show the Lord's death till He come." That 
is to say, we are keeping up a memorial of it here 
in the wilderness until He shall come again ; until 
the wilderness shall blossom as the rose. And 
surely this communion is a pledge of that coming — a 
seal and assurance of it. As often as we partake of 
it we know that our Master shall come. He comes 
to us in the communion itself as a pledge of that last 
coming. More than this, the Lord's Supper is to 
last until His coming, but no longer. We are not 
to have it in this shape in heaven. It is a memorial 



The Import of the Supper. 203 

of Christ's coming. Whenever a pledge is given it 
is given as security that a certain contract shall be 
performed, and when it is performed the pledge is 
given up. So it shall be with the Lord's Supper ; 
when Christ's kingdom is come the Lord's Supper 
shall end. But what shall take its place ? The 
Lord's Supper is a pledge and earnest of the marriage 
feast of the Lamb. "And I heard as it were the 
voice of a great multitude," writes John on the Island 
of Patmos, " and as the voice of many waters, and as 
the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia : for 
the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad 
and rejoice, and give honor to him : for the marriage 
of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself 
ready. And to her was granted that she should be 
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine 
linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith 
unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called 
unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." 

Every time we surround this altar and partake of 
the Lord's Supper we have a pledge, a foretaste and 
assurance of that great marriage supper of the Lamb, 
an invitation to which shall be the crowning glory of 
every redeemed soul. Oh, to be sure of that invita- 
tion ! Oh r to be sure of the wedding-garment ! thai 
when these guest tables are prepared, and these 
viands of heaven are set out by celestial servitors, 
when the fruits of the immortal garden are for the 



204 Living Words. 

Lord's army, and the vines of the heavenly vineyards 
have been pressed by the Lord's husbandmen, and 
the everlasting bread of the kingdom of glory shall be 
set out on the golden plates and dishes of that great 
banqueting-house, that I may be called, and my seat 
be ready, that I may have only to come at the sound 
of the last trump and obey the willing impulse of my 
own regenerated and redeemed soul ; that my ears 
may be open to listen when that sound which shall 
wake the dead to life shall burst upon the darkness 
and silence ! Then the angels shall carry me to 
the entrance of that great banqueting-hall, and I shall 
rise with the marriage festal garments on me, ready 
to enter in ! This is what the Lord pledges me when 
I partake of it, and what he pledges you ; the assur- 
ance of redemption and the pledge of immortal life. 



The Morning- Star. 205 



XII. 
THE MORNING-STAR. 

I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morn- 
ing-star. — Rev. xxii, 16. 



The Book of Revelation is full of mystery ; but what- 
ever disputes there have been about its meaning, no 
one has ever questioned that its main object is to set 
forth the trials and the triumphs of the Church of 
God upon the earth. The differences of opinion are 
as to the interpretation of the book, not as to its 
object. So in all its wondrous pictures we can find 
delineated the fortunes of the kingdom of God. Its 
thunders are the wedding music of the nuptials of 
God's eternal truths with the facts of humanity ; its 
trumpet peals proclaim the triumphs of the cross of 
Christ ; its choirs of shouting angels and innumerable 
hosts of the redeemed all unite in the same utterance, 
the same song of a victorious redemption. 

So the text is an epitome of the book, and is, in fact, 
an epitome of the whole Gospel. It is one of the 
peculiarities of this last book of the Bible that you 
find many such passages as this summing up at the 



206 Living Words. 

end of the book all that had gone before, gathering", 
so to speak, all the substance of the revelation in 
this last manifestation of it. Taking up the threads 
from afar in the very beginnings of God's manifesta- 
tions to man, the very first manifestation after the 
fall, the promise when he said the woman's seed should 
bruise the serpent's head ; taking up the histories and 
prophecies and poems of the Old Testament, and 
binding them up and uniting them as none but the 
Great Architect of heaven could unite them with 
the destinies of the future, and presenting them all 
in pictures, in visions, and images, this final Revela- 
tion now and then, as in the text, condenses them 
into short terse and vigorous passages, containing 
each in itself an epitome of all the word of God. 
And so we find in this text, 

I. The true origin of the kingdom of God and of 
Christ as its author ; and, 

II. The earthly manifestation of Christ in the king- 
dom of God ; and, 

III. The final and glorious triumph of the kingdom 
of God. 

I find all these things in the text : "lam the root 
of David " — that implies the true origin of Christ and 
Christ's kingdom through Him : " I am the offspring 
of David " — that implies the earthly manifestation of 
that kingdom and of Christ as its theocratic pillar: " I 
am the bright and morning-star" — that implies the 



The Morning- Star. 207 

final chasing away of all darkness, and the overthrow 
of all iniquity. 

Let us look, then, at the first point in the text, 
involving Christ as the true origin of the kingdom 
of God — "I am the root of David." I take this 
passage as meaning to assert the pre-existence of the 
Lord Jesus Christ when we consider the passage in re- 
lation to the context and the rest of the word of God. 
The first part of the text is antithetical to the second, 
the latter meaning the humanity of Christ as the off- 
spring of David, and the former his divinity as the 
root of David. Root is to be taken in its literal sense. 
We read of the ax being laid to the root of the tree : 
the "love of money is the root of all evil," implying the 
source or ground. In the eleventh chapter of the 
Romans it is said, "If "the root be holy so are the 
branches." I am aware that critics say that the 
word root is here to be taken in the sense of sprout, 
so that root and offspring would be made synony- 
mous. I cannot agree with them in view of the con- 
text and of the whole tenor of the Scriptures, and 
especially in view of the thirteenth verse of this chap- 
ter, " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
end, the first and^the last." What does that mean ? 
So far as it asserts the personality of Jesus Christ it 
implies what the text implies. So in the first chapter 
and eighth verse, " I am Alpha and Omega, the 
beginning and the ending ; which is and which was 



208 Living Words. 

and which is to come, the Almighty." No words can 
be broader or stronger than these. It is one of those 
grand passages which came to re-assure the apostle 
John when, under the blinding influence of the 
magnificent visions which appeared to him in the 
Island of Patmos, his soul staggered under those 
strange phenomena, and more than once he swooned 
in presence of the great and wonderful Being 
brought before him in the vision, " whose eyes were 
as a flame of fire, whose voice was as the sound of 
many waters." And then he goes on to tell us that 
the Son of man laid his right hand upon him and 
said, " Fear not ; I am the first and the last ; I am 
He that liveth and was dead ; and behold, I am alive 
for evermore ! " 

Taking this interpretation for granted, what prac- 
tical meaning does the text bring us under this first 
head ? First, a just view of the celestial origin of our 
religion in Christ as its divine author. No question 
is more fundamental for any man than the view he 
takes of Christ. His whole religion turns upon that ; 
whether it shall be Christianity or not Christianity 
turns upon that ; not upon whether he calls himself 
or thinks himself a Christian. And it is upon that, 
as I endeavored to show you two weeks ago in treat- 
ing of unbelief as the primal sin, the all comprehending 
sin, the last sin excluded from the world — it is upon 
that that man's final destiny must depend. " What 



The Morning- Star. 209 

think ye of Christ?" said Christ to the Pharisees. 
They answered, " He is the son of David." " How, 
then, doth David in spirit call him Lord ? ' And the 
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, 
till I make thine enemies thy footstool.' If David 
then called him Lord, how is he the son of David ? " 
It was Christ who asked this question — the same 
Christ who says in this last chapter of the Revelation, 
" I am the root and offspring of David " — and no 
man could answer him a word. What is the meaning 
of the question ? They all understood that the Mes- 
siah was to come of that royal race, but the solution 
of the great problem of the Messiahship, the inter- 
pretation of Isaiah's prophecies, which remained dark 
in the Jewish mind — that God was manifest in the 
flesh through the Lord Jesus Christ ; that Christ was 
not only the son of David, but the Lord of David ; not 
only the offspring of David, but the root of David — 
this the Pharisees did not, and most of them would 
not, understand, and they would not because of their 
unbelief. The penalty of it was that they came not 
into the kingdom of God ; never knew its light, never 
shared its redemption. 

Let us fix this one point, then, clearly in our 
piety and faith, that our religion is a divine religion, 
and not a mere formula of the schools ; not a doctrine 
of philosophy or theological exposition wrought out 

by good men, fathers of the Church ; not a part of the 

14 



210 Living Words. 

progress of civilization, but the final hope of human- 
ity, the ship in which all who are to be saved from 
the wreck are and must be saved ; that because God is 
its author the kingdom established here is a royal 
kingdom, the regal dwelling-place of the Almighty 
on earth, in Christ incarnate among men ; that God 
is the author of this city of Jerusalem, as he is the 
author of the New Jerusalem on high. 

Our text, then, rebukes as unchristian all those 
theories which deny the divinity of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The root from which David sprang is the 
same root from which all creation sprang, "for by 
Him," says the epistle to the Colossians, " were all 
things created that are in heaven and that are in 
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones 
or dominions, or principalities or powers : all things 
were created by Him and for Him, and He is before 
all these things, and by Him all things consist." 
The Pharisees were stumbled mightily at the idea that 
he was the root of David, the source from which that 
right royal power sprang ; that from him descended all 
that was in David's royalty, magnificence, and power, 
and far, O far beyond even that Judean throne, first 
and last of human empires in existence, this reign of 
our Redeemer ! the Author of all thrones in heaven 
and earth ; of all principalities, whether in the celestial 
hierarchy or kingdoms here among men ! Our text 
rebukes any theory that denies his divinity, whether 



The Morning- Star 211 

Socinian, Arian, Unitarian, liberalizing, or whatever 
else ; all are shut out from Christianity in its essential 
character. I do not mean to use any harsh terms, 
or say that men cannot be followers of Christ and 
differ from me in this theory of the Trinity ; but 
this I am bound to say, standing before you as an 
expositor of God's truth, according to the best of 
my judgment, that if I could not acknowledge Jesus 
Christ as the root of David I could find no comfort 
in thinking of him as the offspring of David ; that 
Christianity, if not thus divine in its origin, could 
have no superior or exclusive claims, and might 
some day be superseded by another system ! 

If this be true, then, how strong should be our con- 
fidence in Christ, who has wisdom and power infinite at 
his back as the leader of his Church, and is endowed 
with almighty functions to carry on his leadership to 
a glorious triumph ! How fervent should be our love 
for Christ our Messiah when we remember that it 
was not a man who humbled himself, nor an angel 
who took upon himself human shape to be our Re- 
deemer, but He who created all things, and without 
whom there was nothing made that was made — the 
God of all the worlds who came to this earth emptying 
Himself of his greatness — the Ancient of Days cra- 
dling Himself as a babe that we might be saved ! 

The second point in the text is the manifestation 
of God in the flesh, and also of his kingdom here : — 



212 Living Words. 

" I am the root and offspring of David." Discrep- 
ancies have been discovered in the genealogies of 
Luke, but they are of no account in the broad and 
general way in which ordinary minds treat the sub- 
ject, so that, however we look at Christ, he belonged 
to the royal line of David ; yet he humbled himself to 
humanity, and " took upon him the form of a servant, 
and was made in the likeness of man." The fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah connects this with our text : " For 
He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and 
as a root out of a dry ground : He hath no form nor 
comeliness ; and when we shall see Him, there is no 
beauty that we should desire Him." And again in 
the eleventh chapter : " There shall come forth a rod 
out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out 
of his roots :" and it goes on referring to the Mes- 
siah, and we know from all the history that it is ful- 
filled in the Lord Jesus. We find, then, Christ upon 
the earth, a man of royal race, though it had fallen ; a 
race like a tree cut down, great and overshadowing 
in its time, but fallen. Out of its roots there comes 
a sprout, the rod that is to come from Jesse, the 
branch that is to come from that sunken root, now 
lying in the earth soiled and dishonored ; for the 
race of David, though it might have been cherished 
theoretically among the Jews, was of no account 
outwardly ; but a rod was to spring up near it far to 
transcend, in the grandeur of its proportions, the 



The Morning- Star. 213 

royal tree of David's house. It is a very beautiful 
thought. Christ was the descendant of that very 
David who himself as a conquering king was typical 
of Christ. The race of David was to be renewed ; 
there was to be a second David. Who was to be 
this David ? A conqueror, the greatest the Jews 
ever had in his personal qualities and successes, in 
the favor with which God regarded him ; that con- 
quering David who said exultingly — for the Psalms 
are full of exultation in his own power and in the 
divine power sustaining it — "I have run through a 
troop ; and by my God have I leaped over a wall. . . . 
I have pursued mine enemies and overtaken them." 
But the race of David was sunk and degraded when 
this progenitor of an infinite line of kings, a succes- 
sion of monarchs that should reign forever in the 
earth and in heaven, instituted a race of new kings 
and priests to God. Is not each of us a David, and 
more than a David, in privileges, in communication 
with God and holy joy and triumph ? This scion of 
a royal house, and founder of a race of kings, was 
born and cradled in a manger. " He came unto his 
own and his own received him not." The Pharisees 
and Sadducees who looked for a Messiah of the royal 
race of David looked for manifestations such as David 
himself had shown : a conquering king, one which 
should be able to " run through a troop and leap 
over a wall." They took these prophecies in their 



214 Living Words. 

outward and literal seeming, neglecting the inward 
and spiritual, and when Christ came "his own re- 
ceived him not." But let us always remember in 
judging of them that he came to them as a man in 
human form, and, so far as the manifestations of 
humanity are concerned, like you or me. He lived 
a life of suffering, and died as a man, and as a man 
he worked out our redemption. 

What uses are we to get out of this parallel ? 
That if Christ were a man as well as God, then as a 
man he knew our frailty ; as a man he shrank as 
we shrink, endured as we endure, felt pain as we are 
called to feel pain. I do not know that we take in 
the full thought of the humanity of Christ as much 
as we ought in our way of thinking about religion, 
and yet we are taught that the manifestation of God 
in Christ was the solution of the great problem of 
the universe, the welding of eternity with time ; that 
that was what was needed, and which alone would 
suffice to clear up the mystery of man's fall ; that 
he bore sorrows and pain that we might have ever- 
lasting life. We believe all this, but do not think as 
much as we ought of Christ in his humanity. I re- 
member reading somewhere an account of a poor 
man who was in great distress and affliction, poor, 
oppressed, and sick. A Pastor being informed of 
the case visited him, and found him in a rebellious 
frame of mind. "Oh," said the Pastor to him, "can- 



The Morning- Star. 215 

not you endure this suffering of yours with patience ? 
Did not your Saviour endure worse suffering ? Was 
he not poorer and more afflicted ? " " Yes," retorted 
the patient ; " and if I were a God, and could work 
miracles and deliver myself out of all my troubles 
when I chose, I, of course, would be able to endure." 
There is something of that spirit in our habitual way 
of thinking of Christ, forgetting that he lived and 
worked and suffered and died as a man. The mani- 
festations of his divinity were occasional, and for the 
very purpose that called them out — to display his 
power, to justify his claims and vindicate his asser- 
tions that he was the Son of God, the Messiah — 
for these purposes the manifestations of his divinity 
among men were essential ; and yet how few they 
were in the whole course of his life ! He ate as we 
eat, he drank as we drink, slept as we do, wept in 
his sorrow, walked the streets and indulged in social 
converse with his friends, visited them in their 
houses, dined, supped, and chatted with them as we 
do, and when at last he came to the final scene he 
suffered as we do, only ten thousand times more ; 
and dying he died as a man would die-— by the ex- 
haustion of nervous power, by the failure of the vital 
functions, as you or I should die if we were put upon. 
the cross. It is not too much to say that Christ's 
divinity availed him nothing whatever on the earth, 
so far as his own personal comfort or advantage 



2i6 Living Words. 

was concerned. His divinity was displayed not for 
his sake, but for ours, that we might receive the 
everlasting atonement made for us, and not that he 
should suffer any the less : not one pang was soft- 
ened by a consciousness of the Godhead of Christ, 
not one moment of weariness was alleviated, not 
one drop the less of blood demanded, not one bead 
of sweat the less on that immortal brow. Christ 
was the offspring of David, and a man like us. He 
knows what our trials are, for he has felt the same. 

Let us look at the third and last head : Christ is 
the leader of his Church, and will be until his final 
triumph. " I am the bright and morning-star." 
Throughout the Bible the star is made a symbol of 
dominion, glory, and triumph. There is great beauty 
and aptness in the figure in this general use, and 
especially in its application to Christ There is no 
more lovely object in the whole universe of God than 
Venus rising in the east in the morning. She sits 
there in the vast dome serene and calm and bright, 
and as she appears the other stars go out, and the 
night slowly vanishes, first into the twilight, and 
then, while her calm light is still pouring forth its 
solitary beauty into the atmosphere over the earth 
and sky, the daylight comes on. As Milton says : 

" Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, 

If better thou belong not to the dawn, 

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn. 

While day arises, that sweet hour of prime." 



The Morning- Star. 217 

What figure more exquisite, more apt in illustrat- 
ing the relation of the Lord Jesus Christ to his king- 
dom and to the destinies of humanity ! The star 
appears small up yonder, and yet it is a very vast 
planet ; so Christ appears small to the by-standers at 
his coming — a mere humble man like ourselves. 
How little did they know what was in him ! The 
star is small, but how wide-spreading is its light ! 
That small, twinkling Venus — all the continents, and 
hemispheres, and islands are bathed in her delicious 
lustre ! And so in reference to the breadth of 
Christ's kingdom and its extent is the figure ex- 
quisite and applicable. There is a passage in Num- 
bers which brings together the two extremes of 
Pentateuch and Revelation as containing the same 
thought. It is " the prophecy of Balaam : " I shall 
see him, but not now ; I shall behold him, but not 
nigh ; there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a 
sceptre shall rise out of Israel." There you see in 
the dawn of history Christ was predicted under this 
figure of a star — the star and the sceptre together as 
symbols of dominion. 

In a time of gloom the star appeared. There had 
been days of far greater brightness in prophecy and 
history. There was a time in the Jewish history 
when the glory of the earth seemed to be centred in 
Jerusalem, and men might fancy that the last devel- 
opment of God's kingdom was there in the splendor 



218 Living Words. 

of the temple on the summit of Moriah ; but all the 
glory and beauty and magnificence of that temple of 
Solomon had passed away forever. So all that had 
been rich and great in their civilization was rotten at 
the core, the political dominion gone, and the do- 
minion in art and science going. The Roman em- 
pire was apparently in its pride and strength ; but, 
as we all know now, it was bloom outside and the 
worm within. All the hopes of the Jews one after 
another had disappeared. The desires for the com- 
ing of a Deliverer, which had been cherished and 
expressed here and there and yonder — not merely in 
Judea, but in all other countries, by the foremost 
minds, whether inspired or uninspired — had failed, 
and it was an era of desolateness, vice, and darkness, 
of intellectual pride, along with intellectual weak- 
ness, when Christ came upon the earth. It was 
what the Apostle calls the fullness of time. It is 
fitting that this manifestation of Christ at such a 
time should be called the dawning of the day-star. 
Job talks of the eyelids of the morning, and this star, 
first shooting from the eyelids of the morning upon 
this dark night of the earth, was the first premoni- 
tion of the coming of the day. 

The birds of night cannot stand before the coming 
dawn when Venus shines in her lustre in the sky. 
They all betake themselves to their secret places, 
and beasts of prey, prowling only in the night, wan- 



The Morning- Star. 219 

der off as the dawn comes and hide themselves. 
When Christ appeared upon the earth the very first 
scintillation of the day-star was to warn all the old 
systems of wrong and outrage, oppression and dark- 
ness, that their time had come. What has become 
of the civilization of the ancients, of their worships 
and their temples ? the temples of Jupiter and Juno, 
and other grand structures dedicated to the thirty 
thousand gods of the heathen mythology? The 
ruins of them are now strewn around eastern cities ; 
majestic remains at Rome and Athens, and " Pal- 
myra central in the desert ;" but the spirit that hung 
over them during their ages of power and dominion 
has forsaken them forever ; it had to vanish when 
the star of the morning dawned. So it was even 
with the system of Judaism, which, as God's own, 
was something very different ; but before Christian- 
ity all that system vanished ; sacrifices, priesthood, all 
went away when the true final sacrifice, the last and 
greatest High-priest, came. 

And for the diffusion of light as well as the scat- 
tering of darkness the figure has aptness and beauty. 
Remember how the old heroes and great prophets 
talk of the morning as to come. There is a yearning, 
a hope and prayer, an unconscious and sometimes 
a conscious prophecy of the morning. David, all 
through the Psalms, looked forward to it. "Weeping 
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morn- 



220 Living Words. 

ing." All through the Psalms and Proverbs there 
seems to be an anticipation of this day-star of which 
the text speaks. In 2 Sam. xxiii we read, as the 
last words of King David before he died, " He shall 
be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, 
even a morning without clouds ; as the tender grass 
springing out of the earth by clear shining after 
rain." All these figures have the same thought in 
them, and there is the same exquisite fitness in them 
that the manifestation of Christ was the opening 
of the world's last great day. 

The lesson for us as individuals is a simple one. 
Has the day-star yet shone into your heart ? If not, 
hearken to the prophet : " Seek Him that maketh 
the seven stars and Orion : The Lord is his name ! " 

For the Church, the lesson is one of hope and 
confidence. In darkness and fear the watchman 
trod his weary rounds, and was asked, " Watchman, 
what of the night ? watchman, what of the night ? " 
Now that the darkness has been dispelled, now that 
the day-star has risen, we sing joyfully, 

" Trav'ler, blessedness and light, 

Peace and truth, its course portends. 

Watchman, will its beams, alone, 
Gild the spot that gave them birth ? 

Trav'ler, ages are its own ; 
See, it bursts o'er all the earth." 

From the dawn of Christ's religion in the earth 
the light has been increasing in wider and still 



The Morning- Star. 221 

wider circles, diffusing itself more and more in each 
succeeding day into the very heart and life of man- 
kind, spreading from land to land, from shore to 
shore, from kingdom to kingdom. It has its devel- 
opment on earth, and is more or less obstructed ; but, 
like every development which is a real and divine 
one, it goes on, and this day there is more light, 
more Gospel truth over the face of this earth than 
ever there was before. The morning-star dawned 
one thousand eight hundred years ago, and we are 
coming out into the daylight. Not yet is the full, 
broad day here, but it is coming. " Our weeping 
may endure for the night, but" — Oh how joyful! — 
"there shall be joy for mankind and for us in the 
morning." 



222 Living Words. 



XIII. 
THE CROSS A BURDEN. 

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ,—- Gal. vi y IJj.. 



I preached from this text a fortnight ago, and treat- 
ed of the cross of Christ as bringing us blessing 
and salvation. I resume the text again in order that 
we may now contemplate the cross of Christ as bring- 
ing us responsibilities and duties. You will find 
always these two sides to every question that can 
come up in Christian doctrine. 

Let us contemplate the cross, in the first place, as 
an illustrious manifestation and teacher of benevo- 
lence. The whole life of Christ, in fact, was an 
illustration of the highest and purest benevolence. 
From the beginning, as soon as his active life took its 
form, until the last hour of his agony on the cross, he 
went about doing good to the bodies of men as well 
as to their souls. A teacher he was, but a teacher 
who taught by example ; bringing with him every- 
where the atmosphere of gentleness and kindness ; 
treating with the same tenderness the ingrate as 



The Cross a Burden. 223 

the loving, bringing to the hardest hearted the same 
offering of mercy as to the most humble, showing 
in all places the same ever gentle, ever meek, ever 
loving heart. You find that all his miracles are 
miracles of benevolence ; none tending to harm or 
to hurt, but to bless the bodies and souls of those 
who came within his reach. And so he bore himself 
even in little things, kind to those who were asleep 
when they should have been awake, caring for those 
who were hungry by reason of their own improvi- 
dence ; always, both in his personal manners and 
general and public activities, showing the same exam- 
ple of love and benevolence. Such was his life ; and 
his life might be dwelt upon for many, many days as 
affording such illustrations. But I am not, in con- 
nection with the text, to consider so much his life as 
his death — his death as the crowning glory of that 
long career of mercy and of love. A crown of glory 
was it, this death of his upon the cross. That 
scene upon Calvary was the highest manifestation of 
benevolence that the world had ever seen before or 
should ever see again. " Greater love hath no man 
than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend." 
" For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet 
peradventure for a good man some would even dare 
to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in 
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 
The cross of the Lord Jesus was erected outside of 



224 Living Words. 

the gate of Jerusalem, and he hung there between 
the two thieves ; but not as they did, impenitent ; not 
for his crimes, not because of a long life of violence 
and wrong, but after a life of unexampled purity, un- 
rivaled benevolence and love. He hung not as the 
malefactors, but with aggravated cruelty, with griev- 
ous forms of malice and torture put upon his death 
which were not shown to them. And so he died ; not 
to testify his truth as martyrs have often died ; not 
even as Socrates died.; (you know how beautifully that 
death of his is embalmed for all time in the immortal 
pages of Plato ; ) but as a victim — as the victim of the 
world's wrong, because he loved the very sinners who 
brought this doom upon him. It was the sin, the 
terrible sin for which he died, that made his death so 
dreadful ; it was the pain, the agony concentrated 
upon him by the world's sin, and laid upon his gentle, 
tender head, that made him shrink so in the garden : 
" Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." 
Was it that he shrank from the agony of death ? 
Then would he be less than many of the martyrs 
whose names are blazoned on the Church's records. 
No ; but because of the bitterness of the cup that 
was presented to him ; the fearful chalice compound- 
ed of the malice of devils, of the wrath of God, of the 
unnumbered sins of the unnumbered millions that 
had passed away before his time, and the sins of all 
the generations of men that should follow after. That 



The Cross a Burden. 225 

cup he drank, and drank to the dregs. What an illus- 
tration of benevolence — sublime because godlike — 
was this death of Christ for a sinful world ! 

And now, brethren, our practical lesson for to-day 
is put by the apostle in this shape, " Beloved, if God 
so loved us, we ought also to love one another." And 
further, " A new commandment I give unto you, that 
ye love one another." And mark the limits and 
metes of this love, " As I have loved you, that ye also 
love one another." This was not a new law, for it 
was laid down in Leviticus just as strongly and clear- 
ly ; the newness of the commandment consisted in 
this, that we are bound to love one another as Christ 
loved us. How far is that ? To this extent, that he 
gave himself for us, the just for the unjust, that he 
might bring us to God. The law put upon us as 
Christians is all summed up in one of those pregnant 
sentences which vindicate Christianity to be the re- 
ligion for all time and for all men : " Love is the fulfill- 
ing of the law." Take that sentence and look at it 
Turn it over ; think of it. As Christ loved you 
through all his life of sorrow and suffering and pain up 
to that dying hour on Calvary, so should our love 
show itself in gentleness and kindness, and lead us 
over the ocean of life to the haven of everlasting 
rest The law of love is the law of Christianity, 
pervading all possible forms of individual as well as 

public duty. The man who loves his God and loves 

15 



226 Living Words. 

his race in the spirit in which Christ loved us can 
never fail in his duty. 

How beautifully love lights up the scene wherever 
it comes ! how the atmosphere is fragrant with it 
in every house where it is ! Perhaps you have a 
child, a daughter, that has one of those loving spirits, 
a warm, affectionate, tender nature. What is the fruit 
of it ? Whenever you come into the house she is 
ready with a bounding step, bright eye, and tender 
glance to welcome you, and not you alone, for every 
one who comes into the room feels the influence, the 
really magnetic influence, which every one of so ten- 
der and loving a nature possesses. The atmosphere 
of the house is made brighter, sweeter, pleasanter. 
As she grows older she grows better, until at last 
her loving nature becomes transfigured into the 
similitude of Christ's. On the contrary, you may 
have a child of an unloving and unhappy nature, dis- 
posed instead of being always loving to be always 
chiding, always complaining. You may be such a 
one yourself. Let this word drop by the way. Bring 
before your mind the beauty of loving, and see 
if you cannot reform. Such a one will be always 
gloomy, always apparently unhappy, and never satis- 
fied for a moment unless in the gratification of some 
selfish desire. What a contrast : the loving every- 
where performing duty because it is simple to the 
heart that loves ; the morose one forgetting duty, 



The Cross a Burden. 227 

always giving pain. Extend the illustration ; leave 
the family and come into public relations, into the 
haunts of men, into the great world. Who have been 
the leaders and reformers of men but these loving, 
magnetic natures ? Who have carried forward man- 
kind, except men who have had, or made mankind 
believe they have had, this essential, all-powerful prin- 
ciple ? You cannot find in the history of the world 
an example of permanent success without it. What 
a hero was St. Paul, because he had this new baptism 
of Christian love ! " God forbid," said he, " that I 
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I 
unto the world." His heart was filled with a heroism 
of love which enabled him to bear all things, hope all 
things, do all things for his Master. He went through 
a life of activity, never seeking repose, caring for no 
peril, no watching, fasting, or imprisonment, his heart 
always burning under the same impassioned love. 
In the history of the Church the men who have been 
its heroes and great conquerors have been men of 
loving hearts, men who had the spirit of Christ, and 
said, " God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
cross ! " 

" As I have loved you," says the Saviour. How 
greatly we are bound to love each other ! to love 
each other without reference to character — only in this 
sense : I do not mean that you can love with the same 



228 Living Words. 

tenderness and emotion the unlovely that you can the 
lovely, or that you can love others as well as your 
own family and kin, or that you are not to have 
your own express and peculiar friendships — Christ 
had them, and sanctified the idea of friendship for all 
time by those loving connections he formed here 
upon the earth. But as Christ loved those that were 
ungrateful to him, as he loved those who reviled and 
spat upon him, and did not seek, in going to and fro, 
the best people, among whom to spend his time and 
labor, but those that needed him most, and were 
most despised in his time, we are to love our fel- 
lows, no matter how degraded, debased, or unfortu- 
nate, or apparently unworthy of our love, they may be. 
Let us say, when discouraged by men's ingratitude, 
" I will not be hasty, or easily disheartened or dis- 
mayed ; God forbid that I should glory except in the 
cross of Christ." And this was part of his cross. 
He came to the Samaritans, and his Jewish disci- 
ples wondered. They asked if he was going to talk 
with these outcasts, and he turned to them and said, 
" The Samaritan and Jew are alike in the eye of God 
and alike to me." And two Samaritans came to him, 
and by and by he was seen in a house, not at all a 
house of gentility, or distinction, or refinement, and 
there was gathered about him such a company as 
might gather around me in one of the down-town hotels 
—by no means of the better class of hotels — pugilists, 



The Cross a Burden. 229 

and slave-traders, and the lowest class of men you 
choose to think of. How must Jewish respectability 
have stood aghast, even those that believed in the 
Lord, as they saw the Magdalene pouring the oint- 
ment upon his head and washing his feet with her 
tears ; as they saw him surrounded with publicans, 
who were more loathsome, and degraded, and ac- 
cursed in their eyes than those wretches I have 
spoken of are to us ; and as they saw him on a certain 
day pass by the highway where one of those publi- 
cans and tax-gatherers, who had enriched himself by 
grinding the faces of the poor, was in a tree-top, when 
the Saviour, going up, cast his eye on the tree and 
cried out, " Zaccheus, come down, this day I shall 
lodge in thy house." He came to seek and to save 
those who were lost. The richest of all lessons is 
given us in the parable of the prodigal son, where 
the older brother, who had stayed at home and done 
good things all his life, and felt it, and knew it, and 
was proud of it, when he heard that the prodigal, who 
had wasted his substance in riotous living, was to be 
brought back again, folded his arms and scowled, 
thinking, "This indeed is justice!" Let us beware 
that we do not imitate that elder brother. The prodi- 
gals are gathered by thousands all about us, within hail 
of our houses and homes, feeding upon husks, many of 
them not only living like swine, but living with swine. 
God calls them home and wishes us to greet them. 



230 Living Words. 

We find in the cross of Christ a manifestation and 
teacher of individual and personal sacrifice. Christ 
offered himself not for himself, but for others, and for 
the ungrateful and unworthy. Among those who 
mocked him were some who uttered a sentence they 
thought the bitterest and severest of taunts, " He 
saved others, himself he cannot save." It was not to 
save himself that he hung there. Oh, no ; it was not 
to save himself that he emptied himself of his immor- 
tal glory and dwelt in this flesh as a man ; that he 
bore those buffetings and scourgings, and at last died 
in bitterness. " Himself he could not save." What 
lesson do we find here for ourselves ? That if we fol- 
low Christ in this example of his, if we are to be cru- 
cified with Christ, we must empty ourselves of our self- 
ishness, of our earnest, complete, and absolute deter- 
mination to take care of ourselves first of all. Oh, how 
do we deceive and delude ourselves continually with 
a few maxims of worldly wisdom, no doubt truthful 
enough in themselves, to guide us. " If I do not take 
care of myself nobody else will take care of me." That 
is true, and it is a maxim of Christian prudence as well 
as worldly wisdom. " He that does not take care of 
his own household is worse than an infidel." That is 
true ; take care of yourselves, of your own household. 
Take care, however, that in doing this you do not 
take these two little maxims as a cover for every 
form of selfishness and ostentatious living, of extrav- 



The Cross a Burden. 231 

agant display and waste upon your children, your 
house, your furniture, or your mode of living. God 
will not be mocked in any such way. If we are to 
follow Christ, we are to follow him in the spirit of 
self-sacrifice. The cross is to the Church not merely 
the symbol of its faith and pledge of its salvation, but 
the banner under which it is to suffer, and sacrifice, 
and conquer, if conquer it ever shall. Some think 
the Church is a home in which they are to be gathered 
socially, and pleasantly, and happily, until they are 
gathered to the Church above ; that the manifestation 
of Christ on the cross was made solely that he might 
save those who believe at last, and take them home 
to heaven ; and those who look upon Christianity 
in this light are willing to let all the vast fab- 
rics of sin exist ; if they can only creep over the 
battlements and get at last into heaven that is all they 
want. They have mistaken sadly the purpose of 
Christ's Church. For this the Son of man was 
manifest, that he might destroy the works of the 
devil here upon the earth, until at last there shall be 
nothing seen here but the glorious fabric of Christ's 
Church. The Church teaches us sacrifice — sacrifice 
every day of our lives — as the very law of our exist- 
ence, because the law of our redemption in Christ. 

Let us glory in the cross of Christ by imitating 
Christ's love and charity, his determination to do 
all that must be done for his great work by daily 



232 Living Words. 

labors for the bodies and souls of men, by meditating 
continually some plan by which we may enlarge the 
boundaries of human happiness as well as of Christ's 
kingdom, to make some sorrowful heart be cheered, 
to dry up some weeping eyes. Oh how full the 
world is of wretchedness ! and it is ours in God to 
lessen it ; and if we each and all do what we can the 
wilderness will soon take on the beauty of a garden. 
We are called upon to make sacrifices. You remem- 
ber the answer of Nabal, in the lesson which I read 
this morning, to the young men of David : " I have 
gathered together bread and water for my shearers, 
and I have killed my sheep for flesh for these shearers 
who have been shearing my three thousand sheep ; 
shall I take this food and give it to these strange men 
that I know nothing about ? " Brethren, we are al- 
ways tempted to fall into Nabal's sin, and think that 
what we have gathered is only gathered for ourselves 
and those that are with us and of us, or working for us. 
Let us avoid Nabal's sin. If we know not whence 
the wretched poor are that come thronging to our gates 
begging alms continually — the thousands upon thou- 
sands who make this vast city an abode of sin and 
sorrow — when the call come to us let us not say as 
Nabal said, " Shall I take my water and my bread 
and give it to these people whom I know not ? " 
Do not do it. Remember at last Nabal's heart was 
turned to stone. Do not by perpetual acts of resist- 



The Cross a Burden. 233 

ance, when Christ calls you, cause your hearts to change 
to stone. It is easier for the heart to petrify than 
many of us dream. Gradually that heart which in 
early life was accustomed to open so freely and sym- 
pathize so widely learns one lesson of worldly wisdom 
after another, day after day that heart is turning to 
stone ; and when by and by the process is all complete, 
you wonder, perhaps, that you were ever tender at all. 
The constant tendency of worldliness is to petrify the 
feelings, and then, as men become more and more 
petrified, they do as sinners generally do — they glory 
in their shame. To know what the world is at bot- 
tom, to know how much vileness, baseness, meanness, 
hypocrisy, and unworthiness are in it, they think 
a very great achievement of experience and wisdom. 
God save me from such experience if it is going to 
petrify my heart and close my hand, if it is ever going 
to make me forget that blessed cross upon which 
Christ died, or cease to remember that that Saviour 
is the model of my obedience, and should be the type 
of my loving self-sacrifice ! 

The cross is not merely the type of our salvation, 
but the symbol of the Church militant, the flag of the 
Church. What a significant symbol is the flag planted 
over a Consul's house among savage tribes at the ends 
of the earth ! It is not merely a piece of bunting 
with the American stars and stripes, but the symbol 
of our sovereignty and power, of the concentrated 



234 Living Words. 

might and majesty of a mighty people. And so that 
flag upon the stern of a ship may be all tattered and 
torn, worn and dim, and yet, as the flag waves the 
fight concentrates around it ; all the men upon the 
ship's deck will die one by one sooner than that 
flag shall be torn down. Why ? Because the flag 
is any thing ? the bunting any thing ? the stars and 
stripes any thing ? No ; it is because of what the 
flag symbolizes. When it goes down the pride of 
a great nation goes down. It is, so far as it goes, a 
conquest and submission. Look on the field of battle 
at the thickest part of the fight, where men are gath- 
ered together in the fiercest storm of passion. It 
is about the standard, and the standard-bearer holds 
to that flag with the grasp of life and death, and 
men are all about him, fighting furiously to get it 
or to keep it. So, brethren, this cross of the Lord 
Jesus is the symbol of our religion, it is the sign of 
our redemption, of this vast system of goodness and 
power and grace by which Christ saves the world. 
And it is a sign and symbol, too, of our advancing 
host — the flag under which we are to fight for our 
Christ and God. And where is the thickest of the 
fight ? Where can it be thicker than in this very 
city of New York ? Here our banner we hold up, and 
the foe is all about us ; and if ever we are to triumph, 
and if at last Christianity is not to yield here, and the 
good are not to be overborne, and the wicked at last 



The Cross a Burden. 235 

not to triumph, it is because we fight and shall fight 
manfully and gather around the standard here, in 
this closest of battle-fields, and say, " God forbid that 
we should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus 
Christ." And for it we will give our money, our 
prayers ; work for it in Sunday-schools and mission- 
schools, in highways and hedges ; we will go ourselves 
and visit the poor, and pray with the sick and dying ; 
or, if we cannot do these things ourselves, we will 
give our money to help those that do. Thus shall 
we be glorying in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
by imitating his love and self-sacrifice. 



236 Living Words. 



XIV. 
THE PERILS OF IGNORANCE. 

That the soul be without knowledge, it is not good. — Prov. xix, 2. 



This passage is not an isolated one, picked out by 
itself merely as a text for a sermon. It agrees with 
the whole teaching of the word of God. The more 
you study that word the more you will find that this 
sentence is in entire harmony with all the tenor of 
the Scripture. If you turn to the Old Testament you 
will find that the earliest society organized by God 
was organized indeed among an ignorant people, but 
that it aimed in every essential feature to cultivate and 
train that people. It was a great scheme of education 
through and through — the whole Jewish polity. There 
is no injunction in the Pentateuch oftener repeated 
than this : " Thou shalt teach these things to thy chil- 
dren." You will find it in a great variety of con- 
nections reiterated, almost wearisomely so, as if the 
lesson had to be trained into the mind and thought 
and habit of the people. When thou liest down and 
risest up, at home and abroad, anywhere, every- 
where, in the public assembly, in the family, "thou 



The Perils of Ignorance. 237 

shalt teach these things to thy children." It was a 
training and education. So the judges and the 
prophets — what were they but the teachers of Is- 
rael and leaders of the people in the way of prog- 
ress ? Do you know of any song in praise of igno- 
rance in the Book of Psalms ? No ; but many a one 
in honor of knowledge and wisdom. One of the 
lessons of the Book of Job is that knowledge is essen- 
tial to faith, to a faith that shall grow and stand 
against temptation. Knowledge, says Job, is worthy 
of buying at any risk, at any cost ; but it is not to be 
bought as men buy their possessions : " knowledge is 
not to be gotten for gold." And then, as to its 
value, he declares that " silver is not to be weighed for 
the price thereof." As for this Book of Proverbs, 
from which the text is selected, it seems to exhaust 
all the images in nature to illustrate the excellence 
of wisdom and knowledge : wisdom meaning the 
application of knowledge to the practical duties of 
life and to the service of God. In the second chap- 
ter it is said, " When wisdom entereth into thine 
heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, dis- 
cretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep 
thee." As for the Gospel itself, we are expressly 
told by our Saviour that the object of it is to bring 
light into the world — himself the world's light, the 
central sun of righteousness and truth ; and this fig- 
ure and this class of figures are very frequent indeed 



238 Living Words. 

with regard both to Christ and his Gospel. So that 
our text is part of the great atmosphere of the word 
of God and of Christ's Gospel, and we are within 
the scope of our Christian function in treating of it. 

What, then, does the text inculcate ? In the first 
place, this text is true of knowledge in general ; that 
knowledge which is ordinarily called scientific knowl- 
edge, practical knowledge ; a knowledge of books, of 
men, of things, of what is going on in the world ; 
that knowledge which makes up the progress of 
civilization. That the soul be without knowledge in 
these things, my text, as I think the context would 
clearly sustain, means that it is not good. We could 
make this case out very readily, but it is hardly 
necessary to argue it before you. That God in- 
tended the mind for knowledge is patent from the 
very structure of the human intellect. He has given 
us senses as inlets of knowledge, a mind to treat of 
all that may come in ; multiplying and increasing our 
knowledge by thought, and adding to it by observa- 
tion ; faculty upon faculty all making up that won- 
drous piece of electric machinery we call the mind. 
What do these gifts mean ? Just as with all other 
gifts of God, so it is with these : the very giving of 
the gift implies that it is to be used ; the very bestow- 
ment implies a corresponding duty. And where God 
bestows the gift it is not good to spurn it ; nay, with 
this, as with all other of God's gifts, he who spurns it 



The Perils of Ignorance. 239 

does so at his peril. A man may go through the 
world very lazily and comfortably learning nothing, as 
ignorant and stupid at forty as he was at twenty, and 
at sixty as he was at forty ; nay, more so, for this is a 
disease that grows, but still comfortably, all the while. 
But what sort of man is that who has eyes, but sees 
not, and ears, but hears not ? who has an under- 
standing, but uses it not ? endowed with gifts, but 
unconscious of his endowments ? A mere blind ani- 
mal, groping on in the way of life, indeed, and, like an 
animal, enjoying, but that is all. That the soul be 
without knowledge is not good, because God meant 
the soul to be stored with knowledge, and has given 
it the means of acquisition for storing up. 

And then, secondly, the acquisition of what men 
ordinarily call knowledge is fixed upon us as a duty 
not only by the structure of the human faculties, 
but also because it is intended that it shall go along 
with the moral culture and religious development, 
paving the way for these, and making their progress 
more easy than when surrounded by ignorance. A 
priori, ignorance hinders the progress of the truth 
in the individual case and in a community. It can- 
not but be the case that truth, which, to a certain 
extent, must be perceived by the intellect as well as 
received by the heart and treasured in the affections, 
is more likely to make its way in proportion as the 
mind is cultivated. Perhaps you will say, "No." 



240 Living Words. 

Let us take a look, then, into the history of the case 
and see how it is the other way. Which are the most 
religious nations to-day ? (looking back now at the 
matter of fact in the case, not a priori, but in the oppo- 
site direction,) which are they in whom the higher 
knowledge of God is most extant, and most powerful, 
and most aggressive ? Where do you find them ? 
Among the ignorant tribes established on our western 
frontiers ? The dense mass of ignorant people in 
South America ? Among the teeming millions of the 
East, where, in dusky forms, dusky souls grope blindly, 
blankly upon the path of human life ? Is it among 
these that you find the most virtue, the most obedi- 
ence to law, the highest recognition of God, the purest 
religion ? It is in vain to ask these questions. It is 
plain, then, that wherever you find the most en- 
lightened people there you find the most virtuous 
and religious people. You may go through the 
whole list of the nations and will find it so. You 
may say, " Not so. France is the most enlightened 
of all nations." I grant that this is true if you speak 
only of the highest minds in society, of the apex of 
the pyramid of society. Knowledge shines brighter, 
as far as mere intellect is concerned, there than any- 
where else. But what this text means, and what I 
mean, is the diffusion of knowledge among men. It 
may be well for France to have the highest minds at 
the apex of society, but it is not well for her to have 



The Perils of Ignorance. 241 

thirty-three millions of people in almost blind and 
stupid ignorance. Take nations in the degree of their 
culture, and you will find that the quiet home vir- 
tues, and those virtues near akin to religion, and, 
most of all, those virtues which depend upon religion 
and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and reception 
of the truth in Jesus Christ, are most diffused wher- 
ever knowledge is most diffused. Take it in the 
several States of this Union, and it will hold good to 
a marvelous extent here. Wherever the most people 
can read and write there are the most members of 
the Christian Church, and the most useful members 
in proportion to their opportunities. 

If we go back to the beginning of Christianity it 
is the same. The injunction of Christ to his disci- 
ples as he passed away out of sight was, " Go ye, 
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you. No man more 
than Paul the Apostle obeyed this great injunction ; 
and what was his career as a teacher ? Did he go 
from Jerusalem away off to the banks of the Ganges 
among the darkest there to begin the propagation of 
the Gospel ? Did he go far into the frozen North to 
seek a hospitable reception for this new faith, com- 
ing up obscurely as it had among humble men in 

Judea, thinking it would find its best reception 

16 



242 Living Words. 

among the ignorant ? Was that the Apostle's mode 
of arguing and acting ? Nay, brethren, he preached 
his first sermon in Europe, not far away upon the 
shores of the Baltic, but in the very centre of civili- 
zation, by a river-side, in Philippi. The first great 
city which he assaulted was that city which stood at 
the very highest point of human civilization and art, 
culture, and learning. Among the Athenians he 
proclaimed the Unknown God. At Athens, at Cor- 
inth, and above all at Rome, where the government 
of the world centred, and where flowed all forms 
and classes of intellect from all parts of the empire, 
these are the seats and centres of the Apostle's 
chosen labors. So we find in the history of Chris- 
tianity, as well as upon an a priori view of it, this 
position is sustained : that the propagation of the 
Gospel is interwoven with (the two are mutually 
interdependent) and depends upon the propagation 
of general culture and education among the people, 
the diffusion of knowledge among men. 

It is true, in the second place, of the higher knowl- 
edge of God, thaf for the soul to be without knowl- 
edge is not good. To be without the higher knowl- 
edge of God, which is appropriate for the soul, is 
especially a bad thing ; nay, it is the worst of all 
bad things. For a man to be without riches it is 
not good ; but it is not so bad a thing to get on 
in the world very well with very small store of 



The Perils of Ignorance. 243 

this world's wealth ; and after all, a man's life con- 
sisteth not in the abundance which he possesses. 
For a man to be without friends, that is a bad 
thing ; sad, indeed, it is to go on through the 
world alone ; and yet there are many men who have 
every opportunity of culture and wealth who do go 
through the world alone because they have no hearts. 
A man may be accidentally without friends, yet in 
possession of a heart, and a heart and soul given up 
to Christ. That man is not alone. He may be so 
far as outward environment goes, he may be alone as 
to visible companionship ; but not alone, because he 
has the blessed fellowship of the Saviour. For a 
man to be without the blessings of society, friends, 
and home may be a very bad thing ; but the worst 
of all bad things is for a man to be without knowl- 
edge of God. It is bad for the poor wretches who 
live at the Five Points, or the other purlieus of this 
great city anywhere, that they are ignorant, poor, 
abandoned, and have so poor a capacity and so few 
means of getting on ; that they cannot read, that they 
have no way of getting out of the murky atmos- 
phere of vice and wretchedness in which they breathe 
and live out their few unhappy days ; but the worst 
of all is that they have no knowledge of God. The 
knowledge of God is the knowledge that brings peace. 
"Acquaint thyself with Him," said Eliphaz, "and be 
at peace." By this it would seem that the mere fact 



244 Living Words. 

of acquaintanceship with God would bring peace. 
How is that ? He meant something more than a 
mere recognition of the existence of God ; that we 
shall come to know Him as He wishes us to know 
Him, and come to that higher knowledge for which all 
high knowledge was made — the knowledge of our 
relation to God as a Father, recognized and estab- 
lished by the blood of his Son. Mere scientific 
knowledge, so far forth as it is not intended for this 
end, first, in the individual soul, and, second, for 
the spread of Christ's kingdom in the earth, perishes. 
I do not say, as some say, that it corrupts a man ; 
I do not believe it does ; but it perishes in the using, 
and at last it will aggravate the man's condemnation 
when he comes to be judged. It perishes not always 
with the individual ; but unless the knowledge of 
God be added, in any community or nation, to the 
sciences which make up what is called the progress 
of civilization, that civilization, being rotten at the core, 
will fall to pieces by and by, and that I believe is 
shown in all the history of the world. The Greek civ- 
ilization was not the first in the world ; the Egyptian 
was far older. What remains of it now ? There are 
on the shores of the Nile those magnificent sepulchral 
structures which men go to gaze on for their vastness, 
and temple after temple whose remains are but ruins. 
That is all, except the mummies scattered over the 
earth, that remains of Egyptian civilization. So of 



The Perils of Ignorance. 245 

all the later nations ; their remains are but myths, 
phantoms seen in the depths of remote centuries as 
shadows amid the gloom of night, taking form and 
shape, and. of no usefulness to us. Some of them 
have passed utterly away, so that we do not know 
any thing of them at all. Wordsworth has deduced 
the lesson of their history : 

"All true glory rests, 
All praise, all safety, and all happiness, 
Upon the moral law. Egyptian Thebes, 
Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves, 
Palmyra central in the desert, fell, 
And the arts died by which they had been raised. 

" Call Archimedes from his buried tomb 
Up to the plain of vanished Syracuse, 
And feelingly the sage shall make report 
How insecure, how baseless in itself, 
Is the philosophy whose sway depends 
On mere material instruments ; how weak 
All arts and high inventions if unpropped 
By virtue." 

The combination which Christianity seeks in the 
individual and the community is the culture of the 
intellect along with the culture of the heart. To com- 
bine them, each of us in his own person, is the great- 
est achievement we can accomplish ; to cultivate 
ourselves by obtaining all possible knowledge of God, 
and of his word and law ; all possible knowledge of 
human science, for human science is nothing but an 
exposition of God's law in some way or other ; to 
study the Bible, and appreciate what that great Rev- 



246 Living Words. 

elation contains ; to come to God and say, " Here, 
Lord, I will try to learn. I find I know nothing. 
Teach me wondrous things out of thy law." He will 
not let the soul lack that humbly seeks knowledge, 
and the more it knows the humbler it will be, putting 
itself down lower the nearer it gets to the vast ocean 
of God's knowledge. It is our duty to get to as 
high a point as we can in the endeavor to have 
our souls filled with knowledge. In the twenty- 
fourth chapter this wise man says : " By knowledge 
shall the chambers be filled with all precious and 
pleasant riches ; a wise man is strong, yea, a man 
of knowledge increaseth strength." Lord Bacon 
uttered a maxim in his day which has been in every 
one's mouth from that day to this : " Knowledge is 
power." It is but a repetition of this passage from 
the Proverbs : " A man of knowledge increaseth 
strength." Who so strong as he for evil if he chose 
to exert his power for evil ? Who so strong for good 
if he has given his soul to God, and desires to be a 
leader of the race in all virtuous enterprises ? The 
ignorant man is weak. He may be a very Titan in 
stature, a Hercules in brawn of muscle ; the wise 
man near by may be a poor, shriveled, puny, hump- 
backed wretch, and yet in him are all the elements of 
gigantic power, while the other is only a dwarf. Take 
the two and set them to breaking down a rock 
across the river at the beginning of the Palisades. 



The Perils of Ignorance. 247 

Take your giant with the brawny thews and sinews 
and force of muscle, and give him the aid of some of 
the things wise men have made — tools. To make 
the comparison fair, he ought to gO with no tools ; 
but give him a pickaxe and shovel, and let him work 
for a year, and then let your little, shriveled hunch- 
back come along, and he will come with pick and 
shovel, and along with pick and shovel will have a 
tool to bore with, and in his hand a little black pow- 
der, and that powder surcharged with electric fire, 
and, by the help of a few matches, another thing that 
wise men have made, will, in a few days, do more 
than the otlier has accomplished in the whole year. 
So it is with the ordinary conduct of human affairs, 
and so it is with the progress of the Gospel of God. 

A Christian man should be the last of all men to 
oppose the diffusion of knowledge or sing the praises 
of ignorance. The Christian who does this thing 
may be forgiven in God's infinite goodness if he 
trusts in the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ for sal- 
vation, but he shows by the very act of doing it that- 
he has misapprehended the first principles, the of- 
fices and aims of Christianity. There were indeed 
whole ages in which this doctrine was taught — that 
ignorance was the mother of devotion. What was 
the consequence ? A few men hoodwinking and 
managing all the rest. Priests in cowls and hoods 
monopolized all the learning, while kings had to 



248 Living Words. 

make their mark, and noblemen could neither read 
nor write. These men in cowls and hoods were 
the real rulers of the earth, and led kings by the 
nose, and managed the affairs of the nations at their 
pleasure. Whoever at this clay preaches up the 
praise of ignorance just wishes to go back into the 
Middle Ages. If he is a priest, shun him ; if a 
preacher, do not listen to him. No matter who he 
is, he is either an excessively ignorant or an excess- 
ively dangerous man. It is only wild beasts who 
prowl at night, and so whoever it is, monk or friar, 
or any one else, that seeks to keep the lamp of knowl- 
edge from being lit or kindled to a brighter blaze, is 
a beast of prey, and walks in darkness to cover his 
deeds of evil. 

Christian men should be the very foremost in pro- 
moting the general cultivation of the people, and so 
promoting the knowledge of God and the advance- 
ment of His kingdom among men. It is a general 
opinion that the work of education must begin with 
the very lowest strata of society and work upward ; 
but this plan never succeeded yet, and never can. 
Paul began at Athens, at Rome, at Corinth, &£ Philippi. 
The poor in these places were the persons that list- 
ened to him, it is true ; but you mistake most sadly 
if you think the poor people in those places were 
stupid or ignorant. In the States of Greece there 
was a universal culture, and even the slaves there were 



The Perils of Ignorance. 249 

wise ; so that it would be a great mistake to suppose 
that they were ignorant or stupid people who first 
embraced Christianity. In the propagation of knowl- 
edge among men now we must work among all classes. 
We must have universities and colleges to be the 
seminaries of the broadest and most general culture ; 
schools and academies as preparatory for them, and 
public schools as preliminary to these, or as affording 
a broad and general basis of education for the people. 
And there being still a lower stratum of society, 
which even these means of education cannot reach, 
we must have our ragged schools and mission schools 
and tract societies to get at this lower stratum if pos- 
sible, and let a few chinks of light in upon its dark 
gloom and wretchedness. 

It takes public-spirited men to receive these 
truths. A Christian must be, of all men, the most 
public-spirited. It is a blessed thing to lead a quiet 
and peaceable life, but the best way to secure it for 
yourselves and your children is to spread Christian- 
ity, which is the only possible basis of good govern- 
ment. Spread and diffuse sound knowledge, a knowl- 
edge of the Gospel, a knowledge of God among the 
people, if you wish to have peace for yourselves and 
children. As for the individual, it is very comforta- 
ble to have a peaceable, quiet time. You may say, 
" So it is ; " but if you suppose that you are to dis- 
charge the functions of your Christianity, or even 



250 Living Words. 

your common manhood, by going on enjoying your 
own luxuries and the advantages that God has per- 
mitted you.to gather into your own family circle for 
twenty or thirty, or even fifty years, until you become 
an old man, and then die and be transplanted to a 
heaven something like this you had upon the earth, 
only more durable and a little higher finished, you 
have not the theory even of manhood. You cannot 
do it and be a Christian ; you cannot do it and be a 
man, and thus go on selfishly regardless of the mill- 
ions sinning and suffering around you. Some day 
these millions will come up and crush you and your 
children. There must be men of public spirit to 
lead the others. There had to be Pauls and Peters 
in the infancy of the Church ; there had to be Luthers, 
and the thousands joined with him for the Reforma- 
tion, for the work of advancing the Gospel. So here 
there must be public-spirited men. If not you, God 
will raise up others. I trust it will be you — that this 
congregation will rise up and do the work which God 
puts upon it in this great city. 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 251 



xv. 

THE PLEASURE THAT DESTROYS. 

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee 
in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in 
the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all these things God 
will bring thee into judgment. — Eccles. xi, 9. 



The whole subject of this book of Ecclesiastes is the 
vanity of man apart from his immortality. The wise 
man takes up the various conditions and forms of 
human life, and estimates the different varieties of en- 
joyment. Pleasure, passion, appetite, ambition, the 
thirst for wealth — all these are enumerated and 
weighed as it were, and all found to be vanity and 
vexation of spirit. The last two chapters sum up the 
moral instruction of the book, which but for these 
would be very obscure, because the language is often 
ironical, decidedly and strongly so ; sometimes appear- 
ing as if commending the enjoyment of the world and 
making the best of it. " Thou mayest rejoice," says 
one of these passages, in the first part, which is made 
clearly known by the latter part, " thou mayest walk 
in the ways of thine own heart, thou mayest delight 
in the sight of thine eyes. It is quite possible there 



252 Living Words. 

is a time for all things. Thou mayest take thy soul * 
fill of these things for the time being. Do it if you 
please, but do it at your peril." That is the spirit 
of the text. Thou mayest gain a large part of what 
the world has to give in the way of enjoyment and 
in gratification of the natural desires, but what will it 
profit thee if thou gain the whole world and lose thine 
own soul ? In the writings of Solomon there is les- 
son after lesson to show that no man can gain the 
whole world. He can gain but a very small part in 
.achieving the very best and highest he can, and will 
hold that little for a very short time. What shall it 
profit a man if he enjoy all he may, when he comes 
in the end to answer for the deeds done in the body, 
and has no answer to give ? 

We find, then, these two thoughts in the text : 
the first is that, although there is enjoyment in the 
indulgence of our natural passions and appetites, it 
is not the part of a wise man to go to excess in their 
indulgence ; and whoever so indulges must remember 
— and this is the second point which the text brings 
before us — that there is an account to be given, a 
judgment to be rendered, and that it shall be par- 
ticularly for all these things done in the body. The 
text is ironical, I have said. Does it mean, however, 
in its strong irony that there is to be no rejoicing — 
that there cannot be, ought not to be, cheering of the 
heart in youth ? By no means. That is not the 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 253 

spirit of the text or of the word of God throughout. 
The rational cultivation and development of all our 
powers is abundantly provided for by Christianity. 
We injure the religion of Christ amazingly if we 
cloud it always in gloom. That is a false and per- 
verted notion of the religion of Jesus which would 
make it ascetic, and turn every Christian into a 
monk or nun. This idea led to the whole monastic 
system, and to all its evils and destructive results. We 
have no right to throw a cloud over the religion of 
Christ. He himself mingled with good men and bad 
men ; nay, we have more accounts of His associating 
with bad men than with good. His mission was to 
the bad. We read of his dining at the houses of sin- 
ners and men of notoriously bad character — pub- 
licans and tax-gatherers — men that had a worse 
reputation than the greatest defaulters who abound 
in these days. The Pharisees of the time took Him 
to task for it ; it was contrary to the Pharisaical 
religion, the dominant Jewish religion of the time. 
The Pharisees are not all dead yet, and are not all 
Jews. 

We find enjoined in Christianity the proper culti- 
vation of our faculties of mind, and taste, and even 
enjoyment. The sources of pleasure are open to the 
worldling and Christian alike. This is the differ- 
ence, that the Christian, under the guidance of the 
law of God, gets from these sources the pure water of 



254 Living Words. 

enjoyment for his soul as well as for his mind, in- 
structing him at all times, and bringing him nearer to 
a knowledge of God, while the worldling gathers from 
these sources, by using them simply and solely in 
reference to himself and his own individual enjoy- 
ment, poison. Plant the deadly nightshade and the 
violet side by side, and with the same atmos- 
phere, sunshine, and refreshing showers, the night- 
shade secretes its poisonous juices while the other 
gathers its elements of fragrance and beauty. And 
so it is with the Christian man and the sinner in 
reference to all the sources of pleasure in this life. 
God's sunshine is about both. His rains fall alike on 
the just and on the unjust, and His blessings are 
scattered lavishly upon all the children of his hand. 
It depends upon the use they make of them whether 
they shall be elements of joy here and everlasting 
bliss hereafter, or whips and stings and scorpions 
to lash them with everlasting punishment. The 
world with all it affords is a temple for the Chris- 
tian, with the arched dome of beauty above him as 
the vaulted nave of the grand palace, in which he is 
set to worship the Architect, who is at the same 
time his Lord and Master, who adorns the earth with 
beauty, and fills it with riches for the man who knows 
how to use them wisely for his own culture and to 
the glory of God. But the man who follows the 
light of his own eyes and gathers enjoyment simply 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 255 

for himself may do it for awhile, because our nature 
is a very low nature in its degraded and fallen con- 
dition ; he may do it for awhile, and out of the very 
same elements may make himself gradually more 
and more beastly, and drive himself further and fur- 
ther away from God, until at last he becomes like 
the fool, and seems to say in his heart, There is no 
God ; the world is God, my senses are all. And so 
the tendency of the senses to enslave and enthrall us 
when we yield to them, deliberately making up our 
minds to follow them out let them lead us where 
they may — the tendency of the senses to enslave 
and degrade us is the first lesson taught in the word 
of God. 

Assuredly for the unrenewed heart there may be 
pleasure in vice. I have heard it said unguardedly 
from the pulpit that there is no pleasure in sin. 
But if I were to say so every sinner here would 
give me the lie in his heart. There is pleasure 
for the unrenewed soul in the ways of vice, for all 
pleasure is the gratification of the predominant de- 
sire, whatever that desire may be. The gratification 
of our desires is the only pleasure we can feel. If 
our desires go out after God, and we have said, " Thou 
art the only one I have desired, Lord ; thee will I 
seek after ; " if this is the source of our desire as 
Christian people, we find our highest pleasure in the 
gratification of our desire of union with God. But 



256 Living Words. 

for the unregenerate and vicious man his desire is 
of the earth earthy, and the gratification of that desire 
is the highest pleasure of which that man is capa- 
ble. That young man who was last night he knows 
where, doing he knows what- — in the midst of those 
hours of passion and excitement, he went along, as it 
were, under the magnetism of a powerful attraction 
that charmed him as it drew him— he enjoyed those 
hours so maddening and so damning. I do not say 
that he enjoys them now as he sits in the Lord's 
house this morning and listens to His word, but he 
enjoyed them then. And so of all the various forms 
of earthly indulgence ; you do not find enjoyment 
in them after they are over. Some find it in less 
rational indulgences than others. Some are given 
to intoxication and debauchery, and with a beastly 
nature they enjoy them ; others find their highest 
enjoyments in what are called worldly pleasures and 
amusements. I do not say for that young man or 
young woman there is no enjoyment in the giddy 
dance, in the voluptuous waltz which men and women, 
pretending to be members of decent Christian so- 
ciety, are sometimes found to indulge in. I know 
as a man just what human passion is ; what it is to 
feel the blood tingle with strong emotion, and how 
it draws us on. There is pleasure in these things. 
Rejoice, if you will, in the ways of your heart ; follow, 
if you will, the sight of your eyes ; you" may enjoy it 



T/ie Pleasure that Destroys. 257 

if you will ; find in it a pleasure thrilling and exciting 
for a while. It may be three or four or five, or even 
ten or fifteen, years before your appetites shall be 
sated, and these things pall upon the sense. You 
may live a butterfly life, gaudy and beautiful, with a 
certain degree of enjoyment to yourself. I admit 
it all. 

What does my text mean when it says in sub- 
stance, Give up these things ? Not that there is no 
pleasure in the ways of vice, but that, notwithstand- 
ing the pleasures of vice, you are to abandon them ; 
that all these pleasures which are simply earthly and 
sensual — the gratification of desires which have their 
root only in the flesh — that all these things are in- 
consistent not merely with Christianity, but with the 
rational nature of man. What is this doctrine ? 
That we are to deny our natural tendencies ? Un- 
questionably ; control them by the Christian law, 
whether that law be written in the Bible or in your 
own physical constitution. You will find it in both. 
You need not read books of physiology to find out 
the results of vice on the human frame. Vice brings 
sorrow to the heart even in this life ; vice brings evil 
to the flesh even in this life. It is not true that God 
punishes sinners in this life always, or punishes them 
here in proportion to their sins, or inflicts moral pen- 
alties. The moral penalties are reserved for the 

everlasting future, and that man who thinks that the 

17 



258 Living Words. 

sorrows which men bring upon themselves by their 
vices in this world are any portion of the penalty, or 
will diminish the penalty that God will inflict in the 
world to come, is miserably deceiving himself. Vice 
brings sorrow to the heart here and evil to the flesh 
here, and you know it. You may be a young man, 
and yet a very few years of dissipation have sufficed 
to plant evil in your flesh that you will never get rid 
of. You may have begun at the age of twenty with 
a noble, manly physical frame, with the ruddy hue 
of health, and with the blood pulsing through artery 
and vein as God meant it to do, every movement of 
the heart keeping time with the natural order of your 
life — one of the melodies of God's own creation ; and 
now how is it ? Sluggishly and irregularly does that 
tide flow through your veins, and every nerve which 
God meant to be the medium of thought and intelli- 
gence is at times an instrument of torture, pain here 
and pain there throughout the wretched frame ; and 
so you go on, and by and by with tremulous limbs 
you shall gradually approach the grave, and you will 
then admit that although vice may be pleasing for 
a time, it plants evil in the flesh and sorrow in the 
heart. These consequences are but the purely 
physical results of vice. If you were standing on 
the roof of this church — you may be the best man 
in the church or the worst — if you lean over one 
way or another three inches too far, or one inch, you 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 259 

will fall, and no mercy of God will save you, the law 
of gravitation will not be turned aside — and the 
next moment you are a jelly on the pavement, 
whether you be a good man or a bad man. And so 
the violation of God's physical laws will come upon 
you in this life with physical results ; but do not 
deceive yourself with the idea that that is any part 
of God's penalty. That is the strange delusion of 
Universalism. What a delusion ! when all these 
results can be traced, even physiologically, to the 
natural operation of natural agencies ! God's moral 
law is in the sphere of the supernatural, and all 
this evil of the flesh and sorrow of the heart here is 
only a very imperfect type of what the penalties of 
sin will be hereafter. The ancients understood all 
this natural morality. You will find as much moral- 
ity in Seneca as I have given you this morning. 
Plato considered that the offenses of sinners take 
living forms after their death, and are the instruments 
of their punishment. These forms are sometimes 
assumed before death in obedience to physical laws. 
What is the result of all we have to say on the 
subject of my text ? Self-renunciation, self-denial, 
and self-sacrifice are made the groundwork of religion 
in the New Testament ; so that if any man will come 
to Christ he must take up his cross and deny him- 
self. " He that overcometh shall inherit all things, 
and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." 



260 Living Words. 



<i> 



Young man, who are beginning to plant these thorns 
in your flesh and sorrows in your heart, take that 
sentence home and think upon it, and make your 
decision to-day to be a man, and not a brute, wal- 
lowing in the stye of Epicurus. " He that over- 
cometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his 
God, and he shall be my son." But oh for him that 
is overcome ! that goes on in evil until his moral 
powers have been sapped, as well as his physical ; un- 
til this unnerving process which affects him physic- 
ally has penetrated into his moral nature ; until, in 
the feebleness which follows when his passions are 
strong no longer, he finds that he has no will to turn 
back. There is pleasure, I admit, in this world, and 
we may find it, but to enjoy it is to destroy ourselves. 

" The pleasures and delights which mask 
In treacherous smiles life's serious task, 

What are they all 
But the fleet coursers of the chase, 
And death an ambush in the race 

In which we fall ! 

"No foe, no dangerous pass we heed, 
Brook no delay, but onward speed 

With loosened rein, 
And when the fatal snare is near 
We strive to check our mad career, 

But strive in vain ! " 

Let us turn to the second point which the text pre- 
sents — the enforcement of this doctrine on the ground 
that for all these things God will bring us into judg- 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 261 

ment. The simple statement that there shall be a 
time when all men shall be judged for the deeds that 
are done in the body is fearful enough, if we take the 
full force of it into our minds and hearts ; but the 
subject is presented in the Bible with every variety 
of illustration, every form of impressive imagery, to 
attract our attention and awaken our thoughts. All 
the physical world is ransacked to find images where- 
with to force the impression of this single truth home 
upon us. The physical features that are assigned in 
the word of God to the judgment are full of grandeur, 
and at the same time full of terror, so that we can 
hardly bring up our minds to contemplate it without 
a strain and a sense of alarm too much for our feeble 
nature. Just think of it ! Generations have passed 
away in this world, and generations more shall pass, 
until the whole earth shall be filled with dead men's 
bones, and the sea shall wash its countless myriads 
of skeletons ; but the day is coming fast when all this 
shall be changed ; when they that are alive shall be 
caught up into the air, and they that are dead shall 
rise ! The stillness of the silent land shall be broken, 
its lowly dwellings and deep caverns shall re-echo the 
voice of the trumpet which shall sound the first note 
of the resurrection, the first tone of the judgment ; the 
stillness shall be broken, and those scattered skel- 
etons shall come together as in the prophet's vision, 
shall come together bone to bone, and the flesh shall 



262 Living; Wo ids. 



6 



gather on them, and the putrefaction of ages shall 
tremble into life ! The day is coming when He shall 
judge the world in righteousness, and call all men 
forth, the living and the dead, to stand before Him. 
The Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, 
with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of 
God. What a time it shall be ! when, flashing from 
the golden gate of heaven, the glory of that coming 
shall burst upon the astonished earth at midnight ! 
Angels shall attend it, and the spirits of the just, 
thousands upon thousands, legions upon legions, 
shining afar as it comes on, that grandest procession 
of the universe, the procession of God coming with 
His Son to judge the world. And there shall be a 
great white throne, and Christ shall sit upon it. And 
then shall come that fearful final ruin when the earth 
shall be burned up with fire, and the heavens shall be 
rolled together as a parchment scroll. Men shall be 
seated in crowded rooms then even as we are now, 
many of them in temples of worship, and the first 
warning, coming along with that shrill trumpet note, 
shall be the yielding of the opening walls, and tem- 
ples and inmates together shall be whelmed in the 
ruin ; but no death shall be there amid the universal_ 
wreck, for those that are dead shall live, and none 
living shall die. And upon that nigh*- the earth, 
spinning upon its axis its last fearful revolution, shall 
shake off in its rapid flaming whirl its vast freight of 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 263 

living souls upon the wide abyss ; and not only the 
living, but the dead shall come, summoned from 
graves and charnel-houses, from mountain tops and 
valleys, from wild deserts and kingly mausoleums ! 
And the sea shall give up its dead. The coral banks 
far down in its mighty depths shall be alive with 
beating hearts, and in that last ocean storm the wide 
waves shall yawn apart for their coming ; and they 
shall throng forth and join to swell the mighty mass 
of life struggling onward tumultuously in the dark- 
ness, onward and upward, ever upward, toward the 
great white throne, the judgment-seat ! 

These merely physical statements, however, afford 
but an imperfect picture of what the real facts shall be. 
The parting walls of temples, the wreck of the heavens 
and the destruction of the earth, the bursting of fires 
and flames and thunders, are nothing but types of 
that eternal ruin which shall come upon the ungodly ; 
nothing but types of that moral power which God 
will bring to bear upon them. If the physical terror 
were all it would be nothing. There are men who 
will brave the mouth of the cannon in battle without 
fear, and there is no shape of mere physical danger 
and peril that" men will not dare to meet in their wick- 
edness ; and if this were all you might say, " We can 
stand it." But these are but the outside forms of the 
real, individual, personal judgment. " Know thou, that 
for all these things God will bring thee into judg- 



264 Living Worth. 

ment." Not the world, thousands upon thousands, 
and millions upon millions of human beings ; God 
will bring thee to judgment for all these things. 
For all what things ? Why, for those days that you 
have wasted in the pursuit of sin and folly, those 
things in which you have gone after the desires of 
your own heart and the delight of your own eyes ; 
for those sins you have committed against God and 
your own soul ; for your terrible self-indulgence ; 
for that act of dishonesty, that crime against your 
neighbor, that sinful compliance with the world in 
any of its shapes ; for that false ambition that 
led you to sacrifice your own manliness and truth- 
fulness in politics or trade to rise above your fel- 
lows — for all these things God will bring you into 
judgment. 

There will be no escaping it. Here you may escape 
your deserts and get on plausibly with a smooth face 
for years and years, and appear fair without, and be 
nothing but filth and rottenness within. There will be 
no escaping or evading then. Here we can surround 
ourselves with disguises ; but when that time shall 
come every man shall stand naked before God just as 
he is. He shall not be able to compare himself with 
this man or that man and say, " He did worse than 
I did ; he followed his course longer than I did ; if I 
did wrong I had company." You may say that here, 
but not there. God will judge you for these things ; 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 265 

the judgment will be personal, individual, and cover- 
ing all the acts of your life. 

Thou shalt thyself be the witness on that day. 
Here, we are not to criminate ourselves when 
charges are made against us. We are not called 
upon in any case to testify against ourselves ; and 
very often our offenses are concealed, our shame 
is hidden, and we go on and men know nothing 
of what we are in our secret souls. When that 
judgment comes we shall have to stand and tell our 
own story without evasion, without keeping back a 
part of it, without cloaking or dissembling or giv- 
ing excuses. I do not say that God will not know 
the excuses, and take them into account for our poor 
miserable infirmities ; but you and I will have to tell 
the whole story, beginning at the beginning and go- 
ing on to the end, for every man shall give an ac- 
count of himself before God. You will not be wit- 
nessing there against your fellows, but against your 
own soul — forced to give the whole account of all your 
secret sins, all your mean, degrading vices, all your 
acts of selfishness, all your forgetfulness of God ; you 
will have to tell it all. Written upon your own memory 
all these things will be. We forget our vices as we 
do our dead friends ; they are overlaid with layer after 
layer of the occupations, the sorrows, the enjoyments 
of life, until away down at the bottom we have almost 
forgotten them, and it seems to us as if they had never 



266 Living Words. 

been. It requires some awakening, some touch of the 
Spirit of God, to make us think of them at all. Upon 
that day when you come to give an account of yourself 
before God you will find that your mind has preserved 
them all, that they are daguerreotyped there, and in 
the strong light which shall stream from the Son of 
God they will all come out again. The colors for a 
time may have faded, but that sunlight will bring 
them back. 

Young men, young women, who are listening to me 
to-day, I pray you get out of the atmosphere of mere 
worldliness and fashion — what an atmosphere it is ! 
If there is any environment which can degrade a 
human being or harden a young heart, it is the at- 
mosphere of merely fashionable life. You may take 
the tenderest and most beautiful and lovely girl, the 
one that is kindest at home, and loves her father 
and mother best, and put her into the highest cir- 
cle of fashionable life, with plenty of money and 
plenty of scope to do as she pleases ; let her dress 
herself as she will ; cover herself with diamonds and 
pearls, costly silks and laces ; let the love of admi- 
ration become the controlling passion ; and by and 
by all the tenderness of that young nature passes 
away ; her thoughts concentrate upon herself, what 
figure she is cutting, who her admirers are, what 
conquests she can make ; and by and by the youth- 
ful, beautiful modesty is gone, and the way is open 



The Pleasure that Destroys. 267 

for vice that in the beginning would not have been 
dreamed of, or, if thought of, put away as utterly 
impossible. And in the end perhaps there comes 
a wreck and a ruin, a murder perhaps. Or all this 
may be hidden, and it is only a wreck within that 
the world does not know of ; it is only a ruin of a 
precious soul, a murder of a young heart, and the 
world has never heard of it. Christian parents, 
think of these things, and when you are tempted to 
think that fashion must be the atmosphere for your 
children because you have got money, remember that 
it were far better that your money should perish than 
that they should pass through this flame of tempta- 
tion. Gather beautiful things around your own home ; 
get your children to cultivate the arts that adorn home 
and beautify the character. Let them learn — not 
sham learning, pretending to a little ornament of art 
where there is but tinsel on the outside — give them 
the best education you can. At the same time accus- 
tom them to simple pleasures. Let them see that the 
ways of this world in the highest fashionable society 
are Ihe ways that take hold on death. And then it 
may be, by the blessing of God through Christ his 
Son, that, when the judgment comes, you and they 
shall have nothing to fear. 



268 The Sin of Sins. 



XVI. 

THE SIN OF SINS. 

And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, . . . because 
they believe not on me. — John xvi, 8, 0. 



This passage sets forth the work of the Holy Spirit 
in its relation to the world. It teaches that the world 
of itself does not, in fact, know what sin is. A man 
never learns what sin is except by the Spirit of God 
working within him. And this is in accordance with 
all experience. Each man's conscience has some 
light. No matter how degraded he may be, no matter 
how vile, as long as he retains his senses he has 
some consciousness of guilt in wrong-doing, but 
never a substantial practical sense of the necessity of 
reformation until the convincing power of the Holy 
Spirit has performed its work in the heart. 

You will observe from the text that the Holy 
Spirit is not sent, to convince man of the sinfulness 
of the transgression of God's law in the obvious and 
outward way. It is not of sin in its outward show 
that the text speaks. " By the law is the knowledge 
of sin." The thief knows it is wrong to steal without 



Living Words, 269 

any operation of the Holy Ghost ; the adulterer prac- 
tices his devilish arts of seduction in the face of a re- 
proving law and in spite of an accusing conscience ; 
he does not need the Holy Ghost to inform him of 
the evil of his course : and so I might go through the 
whole black catalogue of open sins. They had all 
been reproved by the law of God, by the law of na- 
ture, by the laws of men, before the coming of the 
Paraclete. The Holy Spirit has a higher mission ; 
its function is not to enumerate our actual sins, or 
even to show us how flagrant they are, but to point 
out the deep hidden root from which all sin springs. 
Christ sums up the whole indictment against man- 
kind in one single comprehensive sentence. The 
Holy Spirit will come, and when He comes He 
will convince the world of sin ; not because they 
are swearers, liars, cheats, or murderers ; not be- 
cause they are ungrateful, unholy, or blasphemous — 
none of all these are mentioned. " When He is 
come He will reprove the world of sin, because 
they believe not on me." That is the summing 
up, as if He had undertaken to grasp all there is of 
human wrong and crime and evil and bring it togeth- 
er in this one utterance, and say that the Holy 
Ghost shall come and convince men of this in the 
first place in order to their reformation of this one 
great sin, as the root of all other sins, that they may 
repent of this unbelief of theirs and turn and live. 



270 The Sin of Sins. 

And the passage has also this other meaning, that, if 
the Holy Ghost fails in thus convincing in order to 
reformation, the Holy Ghost will have that other 
work to do of accusing unto condemnation — accusing 
the world of unbelief and proving the accusation — so 
that the world shall go at last into its own place, the 
place of the unbelievers. " He that believeth not 
shall be damned." 

The lesson of the text then is, that the want of faith 
is the sin of sins, the master sin of mankind. To 
convince the world of this the Spirit of God must 
come. Conscience does not accuse us of such a sin ; 
it accuses us of violations of the Decalogue ; but we 
go on year after year in unbelief, and never think of 
that as a sin. There is not a man in this house who 
has not been converted to God by the power of the 
Holy Ghost who has ever thought of his unbelief as 
a sin. We accuse ourselves of the ordinary trans- 
gressions of life, but the sin at the bottom of all, the 
unbelief, that we do not think of. And this is one 
of the reasons why the Holy Ghost was sent to con- 
vince the world of unbelief. There is no other 
•accuser ; conscience does not accuse us, the law 
does not accuse us. And yet nothing can be truer 
than that, since God has revealed himself in Christ, 
the great sin of the world is that it rejects Christ. 

Let us look into this sin, and see in what consists 
its flagrancy. Shall I say that unbelief, first of 



Living Words. 271 

all, introduced sin into the world ? that the very first 
act of transgression was an act of unbelief? that 
this was the beginning, the root, the primal source of 
that act of disobedience which " brought death into 
the world, and all our woe ? " With what craft did 
the devil assail our mother Eve ! " You shall not 
eat of the fruit nor touch it, lest you die," was the 
commandment. " No," said the tempter, " you shall 
not surely die ; but in the day you eat thereof your 
eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods." 
What was the temptation here ? The temptation 
was, in the first place, to shake Eve's faith in God. 
" Do not believe what has been told you ; it is not 
so ; you shall not surely die ; God has threatened 
that you shall, but the whole amount of it is that if 
you give up this absolute unquestioning faith I have 
something better to substitute for it ; if you only 
come to disbelieve in God, and cease your trust in 
him, you shall find by and by that you shall be gods, 
knowing good and evil. That shall be the produce 
of this rich fruit." Thus in the very beginning, in 
the opening act of the drama of humanity in this 
vast theatre of the world, the original temptation 
was to substitute reason for faith. Instead of be- 
lieving and, in humble trust, obeying — obedience is 
ever the fruit of trust, and never is where there is 
no trust — instead of trusting and because of trust 
obeying, the temptation was to disbelieve and, in 



272 The Sin of Sins. 

disbelief, to disobey ; and the bait held out was 
knowledge. " Why go on with this blind, groping 
faith, not knowing whither you go ? Eat of this 
tree, and you shall be as gods, wise — Oh, how wise ! " 
That was the primal temptation and source of the 
primal fall, and from that day to this that has been 
the seat and center of all the devil's temptations, 
the beginning of all man's sins. It was God's 
original decree that the moral union between the 
creatures He had made and Himself should be main- 
tained by this bond of faith. It was faith that, before 
the fall, kept Adam united to his God, and when that 
trust was shaken, when the first breath had sullied 
this mirror of perfect confidence in which the Al- 
mighty's face was always reflected for him, the seeds 
of sin were sown ; and what a bitter harvest has hu- 
manity for these six thousand years been reaping ! 
six thousand years of crime and wrong, oppression 
multiplying upon oppression, an increasing tide of 
rebellion against Almighty God, and all caused by 
our believing in ourselves and in any thing else but 
God. The whole race was separated from God. 

After all, in spite of this want of faith and this 
disobedience, God was merciful, and in the councils 
of His infinite wisdom made provision for the sins 
of the world, and sent His Son a propitiation for our 
sins, and not for ours alone, but for those of the 
whole world. And with a beautiful propriety, with 



The Sin of Sins. 273 

an even poetical justice, so to speak, as an act of 
unbelief was the cause of the primal transgression, 
so, naturally and justly, an act of faith is required 
as the very element and condition of reunion. " Be- 
lieve again," is the message ; " I tried you in the 
garden ; you disbelieved me then, and now I send 
you my Son, that you may get. back again some 
of that pristine purity, that you may come back 
into relations with God by faith ; come now and 
believe." That is the door by which alone we can 
enter into the palace of refuge which God has pre- 
pared in Christ Jesus his Son. And now, is it not 
clear that unbelief in Jesus Christ is the greatest of 
sins, because it cuts off this union with God ? There 
is no such thing as virtue apart from God ; there is 
no godliness where there is no God ; and they that 
are without faith are without God in the world — or- 
phaned in this grand universe of which the Architect 
is ready to be every man's father ; going about blind, 
fatherless, hopeless, "without God in the world." 
And yet God offers Christ as the means of restora- 
tion. To reject Him, can it be otherwise than the 
beginning of sin — to reject the only hope of getting 
back to God ? 

I have said enough to show that unbelief is the 
worst of all sins, the root of all sins, the basest of all 
sins. You may say this is all argumentative and 

inferential, but it is far from being so, and if you want 

18 



274 Living Words. 

something plain and direct, go to the law, and see 
what it says. What is the command ? That we live 
virtuously, keep ourselves free from idolatry, avoid 
theft, lies, and murder, and the other crimes forbid- 
den by the commandments ? No. I John iii, 23 : 
" And this is his commandment ; That we should 
believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ." And 
then, further, as stated in the first Epistle of John 
and fifth chapter — and if there be any unbeliever 
here, as I fear there may be, I hope he will listen 
to these words : " He that believeth not God hath 
made him a liar ; because he believeth not the record 
that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, 
that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is 
in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life ; and he 
that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 

In rejecting Christ you make God a liar. The 
highest insult you can pay to the majesty of heaven 
these words embody. Have you ever thought of 
their full meaning ? To compare small things with 
great, is there any insult among men so extreme as 
this ? Is there any man who will bear to be told 
that he is a liar ? Among men of the world to be 
charged directly with falsehood, is it not considered 
an insult to be wiped out in blood ? And is it not 
the case that men who are gamblers and debauchees, 
so vile as hardly to be fit to live, will defend their 
claim to veracity at the sword's point or the pistol's 



The Sin of Sins. 275 

mouth ? Is there any thing that wounds your heart 
and goes into your soul like iron, piercing and 
penetrating, and numbing and paralyzing at the 
same time, like the knowledge that your dear child 
tells you a lie ? that you cannot trust its word ? 
that it is false to you ? Would any thing so effect- 
ually destroy your child's confidence in you as to 
believe that you are a liar ? Why is this ? Be- 
cause this principle of faith runs through all God's 
government, through all the relations between God 
and man, and between man and man in society. If 
men are not true to each other then " Chaos is come 
again." If you are not true to your fellow, you can 
have no relations with him ; if you do not believe 
your child and he you, you are no longer father and 
son ; you are aliens and foreigners, bound by no tie 
except it be a chain which galls you both. So there 
is no relation between God and man where there is 
no faith ; all intercourse is cut off. There is no 
bridge between heaven and earth but this. So, my 
brethren, God brings as the acme of his accusation 
against you, your unbelief, proving it to be the vilest 
and extremest of sins ; since, in this disbelief of yours, 
you charge the lie upon Almighty God. You may 
sit in your pew in your unbelief, and, though accom- 
plished and outwardly fair to look upon, loving and 
kind, yet, if the truth were told, you are every 
day thrusting your rebellious hand into the face 



276 Living Words. 

of Almighty God and telling him he is a liar. It 
means that and nothing else. 

Again, unbelief is the greatest of all sins because 
it offers the grossest indignity to Christ the Re- 
deemer. What was the object of Christ's coming ? 
That " whosoever believeth 011 Him might have ever- 
lasting life." John iii, 16. In all the four evangelists 
you will find that the complaint made of His friends, 
of His kindred, is not that they are sinners. He 
does not marvel or complain of this, but He marvels 
and complains because of their unbelief. And what 
was the unbelief of that time to our unbelief, crucify- 
ing, as we do, the Son of God afresh, in despite 
of the two thousand years and its accumulated 
testimony — rejecting His cross, and putting Him 
to an open shame by refusing to believe on 
Him ? And, therefore, this is the condemnation — 
not that men break the ten commandments ; for this 
the law will come upon them, the law which will 
demand its penalty, the law which pursues and 
knows no mercy, which always presents the same 
front of stern, relentless determination, and will one 
day claim its own. But this is the condemnation 
coming out of Christ's own lips — that " light has 
come into the world, and men love darkness rather 
than light, because their deeds are evil." 

Are we not ready to believe that disbelief is the 
source of other sins ? Cut off from God by 



The Sin of Si?is. 277 

Adam's sin, and cut off from Christ by our own un- 
belief, what elements of goodness have we ? what 
means of being good or doing good ? and to whom 
can we go ? We are doubly separated and distanced 
from God, and to whom shall we go ? With what 
hope of virtue shall we pass through this world ? 
Shall we go to the lessons of the world ? the teach- 
ings of philosophy ? the instruction of books ? the 
lessons of nature ? These are poisons for us ; they 
report to us falsely, or, wherein they do report cor- 
rectly, they fall upon heedless ears, because there is 
in us the evil heart of unbelief. The Bible sums 
it up in a sentence: "The heart of unbelief is evil," 
Heb. iv, 2 ; and as the heart is so is the life. " As a 
man thinketh in his heart so is he." What a world 
of philosophy in a single utterance ! What a volume 
of ethics and morals compacted into one brief 
proposition ! If yours be an evil heart of unbelief, 
if you have no relation to God by Christ, no hold 
upon the everlasting throne, your heart is evil, and 
out of that evil heart nothing good can come. You 
cannot gather grapes from thorns, nor autumn figs 
from thistles. If the fountain be bitter, bitter must 
be the waters. 

" Unto them that are unbelieving nothing is pure : 
but even their mind and conscience is defiled." 
Titus i, 15. This is very severe language; severe, 
out true. You may have the elements of natural 



278 Living Words. 

virtues in your constitution, and they may bloom 
in the fair and beautiful fruit of this world ; you 
may have a superior intellect, and you may learn 
certain maxims of worldly prudence that will carry 
you on. There may be a fair outward fabric of mo- 
rality in you. God restrains the evil that is in the 
natural heart in order that the experiment of society 
may go on. Now and then it breaks out in acts of 
violence, abnormal and irregular, at which men stand 
aghast — proofs that the normal state of things is a 
habit of subjection, and that, in order that God's 
problems may be wrought out among men, and 
that the kingdom of God shall subsist in the 
earth at all, and have any fair play among men, 
it is necessary that the outbreaking of sin should 
be restrained — and yet the deep root remains in 
every unbelieving soul. You, as a personal indi- 
vidual, have all the elements of all possible sin 
within you. God's grace restrains it now, or good 
education. Good habits, good homes, good laws, 
prevent you from falling into many sins. And yet 
if you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ no 
person can say what temptation you shall fall into. 
" Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this 
thing ? " said Hazael of old ; and men have been 
repeating the saying ever since. Yet if the cur- 
tain of the future could be rolled up, some act of 
flagrant shame, some vile, debasing lust, some act 



The Sin of Shis. 279 

of wrong, some theft, or cheating of your employer 
— who knows that such shall never happen ? You 
do not. The root is within you of all these. The 
only safety for you is in getting into union with 
God through Christ by a living faith. The evil heart 
of unbelief, get that out of you, and there is a 
chance, nay, a certainty, that the waters will be pure 
as the fountain is pure. The outward action only 
men judge ; the world sees that, and sees nothing 
more. So the mighty stream of evil and wrong rolls 
on year after year, and generation after generation, 
and men wonder where these mighty waters come 
from, so dark, threatening, and poisonous. The hid- 
den source, the unbelief, they cannot see. The evil 
heart of unbelief is not taken out of the world, and 
out of the evil heart nothing but evil can spring. 

And now, if you are an unbeliever, you are com- 
mitting all possible sins ; the roots and seeds of 
all possible sins are there. Why is it so ? Why, 
if you profess the Christian name, are you only half 
a believer ? A too great regard for this world is 
probably one cause, if not the only one. " How can 
ye believe who receive honor one from another ? " 
John v, 44. And the Apostle Paul says, " If our 
Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost ; in 
whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds 
of them which believe not, lest the light of the glori- 
ous Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, 



280 Living Words. 

should shine unto them." 2 Cor. iv, 3, 4. Oh, that is 
not my temptation ! Is it not ? You are a practi- 
cal unbeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ, Your life, 
habits, property have not been consecrated to God. 
Why not ? Ask your own heart, and see if the 
honor that comes of your fellow-men is a thing you 
do not covet. I do not speak of a desire for political 
honors ; but how is it about the position you hold, 
your intelligence, wealth, influence in society, your 
style of living, equipage and ornaments, and show in 
the world ? Are they not for your own personal com- 
fort ? Do you build your palace that Christ may be 
enthroned and worshiped in the bosom of your fam- 
ily ? It is because you seek honor one of another 
that you have so little faith ; because the god of this 
world dazzles you, as he always dazzles them that 
obey him and are his followers. You will say, " I 
believe in Christ and come to church every Sunday ; 
I shall certainly be saved." And yet you believe 
more in yourself, your children, your property, and 
ability to get property ; and the longer you go on in 
this course of disobedience the delusion becomes 
greater, according to the declaration of Paul, that " at 
last they shall be given up to strong delusion, to 
believe a he ; that they all may be damned that be- 
lieve not the truth, and have pleasure in unrighteous- 
ness." 2 Thess. ii, 12. Strong delusion! how many 
of us are under it ! We believe in pleasure, particu- 



The Sin of Sins. 281 

larly if we are young people, before the flush and 
heat and fire of youth are gone. We believe in our 
earthly possession, in friendship, love — strong de- 
lusions that you are given over to believe ; a lie that 
you believe. " I hear of a friend dying on this hand 
and on that ; but it does not come to me. I am to 
live for a certain length of time." Strong delusion, 
my friend ; you are given over to believe a lie. 
We cannot live long ; and we do not know how 
short our lives may be. And so I might go on 
through the catalogue of vain conceits that we prac- 
tice upon ourselves. 

The great danger of this sin lies in its very subtilty 
and ability to evade our recognition of it. A man 
can find out about outward sins ; other people will 
tell him, and at all events they are obvious. But 
this little fountain, hidden away down in some recess 
of the soul, this primal origin of all sins, sends forth 
its streams of death-giving waters, and is never itself 
suspected. Thus we reject and dishonor Christ. 
How can I dishonor Christ ? you may say. Do you 
not tell me he is God, and has all power in heaven 
and earth ? Yet it is just so. Christ himself cannot 
help you without the act of belief on your part: " He 
did not many mighty works there." Why ? " Because 
of their unbelief." And so, my friend, I say that you 
dishonor Christ effectually, and disarm Him so that 
He cannot perform the miracle of bringing you out 



282 Living Words. 

of darkness into His marvelous light, which He is 
anxious to perform, because of your unbelief. It 
keeps you from God, and keeps you where you are. 
If unbelief seizes upon a young man who might 
otherwise be the fairest sacrifice on the altar of 
God, it makes him a vain fopling, stupid and empty- 
brained, and more than empty-hearted — for such are 
all that reject Christ in spite of all the advantages 
and accomplishments that may be heaped upon 
them— a follower of fashion, imitating all the fool- 
ish changes it exhibits because they are changes, 
and disbelieving the eternal truths of the Gospel. 
Unbelief in God, attended by the utmost belief in 
the milliner ; unbelief in Christ, attended by the 
most implicit faith in whoever leads in modes of 
dress or modes of life ; believing in all the shows, 
and rejecting the substance ! And those of us who 
go into the world of fashion know that if there be 
any world in which there is no God it is just that 
world ; that if there be any world in which the 
human heart is hardened most effectually and kept 
hard, it is that world ; that if there be any being on 
the face of the Lord's earth selfish, heartless, with- 
out sympathy, thinking only of personal and indi- 
vidual ends and achievements, it is the world's man 
or woman of fashion. And all these are unbelievers, 
followers of the changing fashion of this world, but 
not of the unchanging God. 



The Sin of Sins. 283 

If you are living in this unbelief, I close with 
the prayer to God that He may break that heart 
of stone. The end of such a life must be corrup- 
tion and death, no matter how beautiful it may be 
now. The Holy Ghost comes to you to-day and 
speaks through my feeble voice, and says, " I con- 
vince you of sin because you believe not in Him." 
Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ shall make you 
whole ; His bleeding heart shall take you in ; He is 
ready to take you to himself and make an end of 
your unbelief. Do not deceive yourselves by think- 
ing that you can build up a character without the 
influence of the Holy Spirit. The root is the un- 
belief, and as long as that is there you need not 
attempt to cut down the branches. The ailanthus 
tree, if cut down in the autumn, will present in the 
spring a flourishing group of young trees ; so it is 
with the deep, budding, life-giving, yet death-produc- 
ing, root of your sins. You may cut down outward 
shows of sin, but leave the unbelief at the bottom, 
and you shall see a plentiful crop of vigorous shoots 
coming up again. Begin at the root ! 



284 Living Words. 



XVII. 
THE WISDOM OF CHILDHOOD. 

In malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. 
1 Cor. xiv % 20. 



The doctrine of the text is that the child-like sim- 
plicity of Christianity is quite compatible with the 
development and use of the understanding, and that 
both these are essential to the full maturity of the 
Christian character. The doctrine is precisely the 
same as that contained in Christ's injunction to his 
disciples, " Be ye therefore wise as serpents and 
harmless as doves." As far as the use of the under- 
standing is concerned, the parable of the unjust 
steward inculcates the same lesson. Christ Himself 
recommends to the children of light the wisdom 
which characterizes the children of the world. Be 
children in wickedness, be men in understanding ; 
be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These 
are the maxims of the Christian life as here enjoined. 
That is a very beautiful passage in the life of Christ, 
repeated by three of the evangelists, in which he sets 



The Wisdom of Childhood. 285 

forth the child-like element as the type of a true and 
genuine follower of Christ, when they brought to 
Him young children that he might touch them, and 
the disciples rebuked those that brought them ; but 
Christ said, " Suffer little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not." And the application is in 
these words : " Verily I say unto you, whosoever 
shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child 
shall in nowise enter therein." Mark the compre- 
hensiveness of the utterance ! In nowise can a 
man enter into the kingdom of heaven unless he 
come as a little child. This implies that the king- 
dom of God is an invisible and spiritual kingdom, 
and that to enter into it this disposition of heart is 
necessary, namely, the child-like spirit — a spirit free 
from crime and self-will, receiving the divine bless- 
ings as they come in humble dependence and sub- 
mission. The doctrine is — in a single sentence — 
that all the qualities which make childhood beautiful 
are to be prolonged into the mature life, and, under 
the guidance of the developed reason of the adult, 
are to be illustrated in all the relations between man 
and his Maker. Whatever the traits of childhood 
that are so admirable — not all the traits, certainly, 
because one of the traits of childhood is ignorance, 
and this is the very thing against which the latter 
part of the text guards us ; not the intellectual qual- 
ities of the child, not its weakness in any shape ; 



286 Living Words. 

but its innocence, its gentleness, its loving nature, 
its benevolence and simplicity of aim : these, which 
are in fact modifications of the same thing — the 
word innocence embodying them all — are the ele- 
ments which are to be prolonged into the Christian 
life. These are quite distinct from feebleness or 
cowardice. Feebleness may make us love the child 
because it makes it dependent upon us, but feeble- 
ness itself is not beautiful. We are only to be chil- 
dren so far as freedom from vice, from malice, from 
all forms of wrong feeling, of wrong thinking, and 
wrong acting is concerned. The child has not 
learned these yet ; it is unsophisticated, it trusts, 
it believes, it tells the truth. The child only learns 
to distrust by finding itself deceived, only learns 
to lie by being lied to. It takes every utterance of 
yours for a divine utterance, because you stand to 
your child in the place of God. Its teachers are 
apostles for it, and their sayings are inspirations. 
It is only when the child finds that the apostle it has 
trusted in, so far from being an apostle, is a cheat 
and swindler ; that the parent it has trusted as . 
the embodiment of all truth, all virtue, and elevation 
of character, deceives it ; it is only when the gods 
of the child's idolatry are rudely shattered to pieces 
before its little eyes, that it begins to learn and know 
how false is the world in which it lives. Imposed 
upon it, induced upon it, laid upon it, are these evil 



The Wisdom of Childhood. 287 

habits rather than born with it. What is born with 
it is the tendency of a rebellious will, but that is 
quite a different thing from the evils of which I have 
been speaking. What the Saviour means in saying 
that we must be like little children is, that we must 
be free from that malice which is superinduced by 
communion with a bad and wicked world. We are 
to be like the little child in truthfulness. 

" He hath no skill to utter lies, 
His very soul is in his eyes ; 
Single his aim in all, and true, 
And apt to praise what others do." 

He goes straight to the point without sophistication. 
We are to be infants, as far as all malice is con- 
cerned, as the infant that hangs on its mother's 
bosom, and looks up trustfully and affectionately 
and believingly into her face. Oh how lovely child- 
hood is ! Who is there that does not love a child ? 
Who, except the man whose heart is seared by mis- 
fortune or by crime ? If it be not so, he is a most 
unhappy being. Childhood is the type of innocence, 
tenderness, gentleness, and all the beautiful elements 
of Christianity. 

Our text says, "Be children in malice" — having 
no more aims, plots, plans, contrivances, devices than 
childhood. It is the characteristic of genius to carry 
forward the freshness of childhood, the freshness of 
the admiring eye that sees perpetually novelty in all 



288 Living Words. 

things, in air and sea, in sun and moon and star 
throughout the year, in man and woman — perpetual 
novelty and beauty and freshness — that is the char- 
acteristic of genius it is said. So it is only men of 
genius who are poets and creators, because they 
only carry forward this freshness of the eye, and this 
perception and appreciation into hoary age ; the 
common eye becomes dim and common faculties 
blunted. To preserve this freshness in the moral 
world is the province of the Gospel. We do not 
need to be men of genius to carry forward child- 
like tenderness of feeling into our robust manhood, 
or onward to weary age. God's grace can give us 
this rich endowment if we seek Him with true 
hearts, and have a single eye and aim, which is the 
whole essence of child-like simplicity of character. 
A single aim ! How often is it recommended in 
the Scriptures ! " If thine eye be single thy whole 
body will be full of light." It is our mixed and 
divided aims and purposes that keep us so far from 
the Gospel life and Gospel character — striving to 
serve God and mammon, to secure a reversion in the 
skies and keep what we can in this world. It is 
because the world is so much with us that we have 
not this simplicity, this gentle, child-like tenderness. 
My brother, my friend, try for a little while, trusting 
in God, to keep a single eye and aim to his glory ; 
try it for one week ; trust in Christ to give right 



The Wisdom of CJiildhood. 289 

aims, and not let them mix with your natural desires. 
You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot 
touch pitch and not be denied. The river Missis- 
sippi comes from two main branches. One of them 
springs far up in the North, and goes down over its 
rocky bed for hundreds of miles, and the other, pass- 
ing through an alluvial soil for many miles, gathers 
as it passes, every hour, some new deposit of soil ; 
and the two streams coming together, rush both of 
them strongly on, the pure on one hand and the 
turbid on the other, and for awhile roll on side by 
side without commingling, and you can see them as 
they go, the turbid river here, the bright river there. 
By and by, if you watch them, you will see the 
turbid water gaining the victory, soiling more and 
more and more the whole stream, until at last the 
two streams, blending into one foul mixture, roll on 
undistinguishable to the gulf. If we keep our eye 
single, simple, and sincere, our whole body will be 
full of light ; we shall be God's then, we can be child- 
like all the way through to the end ; if not, our char- 
acter at the best is a mixture of the bright and dark, 
pure and impure, and these two parts of our charac- 
ter will become, by and by, so mingled together that 
the by-standers cannot distinguish the origin of the 
one from the other. Let us cultivate this child-like 
simplicity of character. How exquisite it is, and 

how attractive, when we find it in the Christian life 

39 



290 Living Words. 

and in common society ! How all men look up to 
those who as exhibit this simple, child-like, Christian 
life ! Any young man, any middle-aged man, any old 
man of such a character is a centre of light, quoted 
as an example, appealed to as a model for imitation ; 
men's hearts go to them, they cannot tell why, but 
they cannot refuse to let them go. There is a won- 
derfully attractive power in the Christian life in this 
its most lovely and beautiful form. The first lesson 
of the devil with a boy is to get him to be ashamed 
of his innocence ; and when he succeeds in this, 
when he gets a young lad to be ashamed of his good 
habits, and the maxims which his father and mother 
have been for years endeavoring to fix upon his 
mind, that lad is in terrible and imminent peril. To 
be ashamed of one's very virtues — how sad this is ! 
Yet we see people every day ashamed of the good 
which they feel struggling within them. They go 
out among worldliness and wicked passions, and 
attempt to hide and cover up that which is their 
chiefest beauty and loveliness. Let not the devil 
have that first child-like purity of yours. If you 
can keep it into your manhood, and go on into 
the mature Christian life without ever having tasted 
of the cup of this world's evil passions, how much 
more beautiful your Christian life ; how happier here 
even, and how much happier hereafter, that you shall 
have nothing to reflect upon or recollect of evil or of 



The Wisdom of Childhood. _ 291 

wrong ! It is an inestimable blessing for any young 
man to keep his purity, gentleness, and simplicity 
all through life. 

With this child-like simplicity of character we are 
to unite manliness of understanding. Paul says in 
the thirteenth chapter, " When I was a child I spake 
as a child, understood as a child, and thought as 
a child, but when I became a man I put away 
childish things." Your child-likeness is to be con- 
fined to the moral nature ; beyond that, in the region 
of the intellect, the will, the activities, you are 
commanded and summoned as Christians to be 
men. This is not quite the idea that some peo- 
ple have of Christianity and Christian life. There 
are some people, who ought to know better, who 
have an idea that to be a Christian it is not at 
all needful that a man should cultivate his mind or 
understanding. Rather it has been thought in cer- 
tain ages, and by some people now, that an ignorant 
man will get on quite as well, and perhaps a little 
better, without any thing like courage and manliness 
in the use of the understanding ; and that the em- 
ployment of the means which God gives us is, per- 
haps, a little hindrance in the Christian life. There 
is nothing like pusillanimity, mental or moral, in 
Christianity. Self-imposed penalties and inflictions 
for the alleged purpose of purifying the moral nature 
are against the spirit of Christianity, weakening the 



292 Living Words, 

moral power, crippling our ambition to do Well, our 
purposes and aims of greatness, and, it may be, 
crippling our religious courage. It is to develop 
the whole powers of body, mind, and soul to their 
fullest operation in this life, that Christ came to 
prepare his chosen ones here for a glorious im- 
mortality of service and blessedness hereafter. We 
are called upon to be men, not children or weak- 
lings, but sturdy, vigorous, self-reliant, clear-headed 
men, as far as the means are given to us ; culti- 
vating our intellect, and applying it to whatever is 
practicable ; taking up our opinions and principles 
not upon hearsay, except when we receive the testi- 
mony of those better informed and better able to 
form a judgment than ourselves, and when we have 
formed our opinions adhering to them ; not blown 
about by every wind of doctrine of those who go 
about with all sorts of sleight of hand in order to 
deceive ; not full of weakness, imbecility, and cre- 
dulity, nor yet of skepticism — for these two ex- 
tremes are the opposite poles, and between them lies 
the true mean of manly Christian understanding ; 
not believing every thing that is told to us, or 
preached to us, or written at us, and not disposed to 
distrust every man and every sermon and every 
book, but endeavoring, with the clear, definite use of 
our own mental faculties, to get at right views, and 
then maintain them steadfastly and manfully. How 



The Wisdom of CJiildJiood. 293 

beautiful is the connection between these two ele- 
ments of Christianity ! Bacon said in reference to 
the field of science that it is only the reverent and 
docile understanding that is ever to gain access to 
the kingdom of nature. You will find among your 
acquaintances that the best cultivated men are the 
least conceited ; the pedantic are men of less under- 
standing ; when they get into a higher level, there 
comes along with culture more and more of this 
child-like simplicity of which I have been speaking ; 
because the more a man learns of the order of nature 
the more he is conscious of his own imperfect grasp 
of all these great topics. Then let us, in our Chris- 
tian life and in our intercourse with men, remember 
that God has given us, on the one hand, a moral 
nature, in which we are to keep by faith and humble 
prayer our child-like simplicity, and on the other 
hand an understanding, which we are to use in the 
battle of life ; and if we do not use it, we must be 
responsible for the neglect ; and if we misuse it, we 
must be responsible for that. It is a great guilt in 
any man to allow what mental faculties he may 
possess to become rusty from disuse, or to submit 
them implicitly to another. To submit to others 
who have information which you have not is a mark 
of sagacity. Men in business, or in literary pur- 
suits, know how to judge of the amount of evi- 
dence upon which they can rely, and when they 



294 Living Words. 

should give up their own judgments to others ; and 
have a sort of intuitive sagacity in finding the man 
who can be trusted ; but that is a different thing 
from what is called pinning your faith to any man's 
coat sleeve, or taking any man's dicta in all things. 
" In malice be ye children, but in understanding be 
men ;" and use this faculty of thought which God has 
given you upon the great problems of life ; in the 
practical business of life, upon the doctrines of the 
Gospel, on what you read and hear ; and in all things 
cultivate manliness of understanding. 

This manliness of understanding implies also prog- 
ress and advancement in the field of scholarship. The 
true scholar thinks not of what he has done, but directs 
his thoughts to what he has to do. Though not all 
called upon to be scholars or investigators of nature, 
there is no one of us called upon to be stupid or ig- 
norant. Every one can add some little item to his 
stock of knowledge every day. Let us see that we do ; 
this is one great ingredient in manliness of under- 
standing. Bacon's remark is quite applicable to 
study in the field of knowledge ; there is never any 
collision between a pure and simple soul and a strong 
intellect in the same nature. There may be intel- 
lectual difficulties, and it is not the policy of wisdom 
to frown them down or trample them under foot. If 
they be real absolute difficulties, get a solution if 
there is a solution, and if there be none there is no 



The Wisdom of Childhood. 295 

difficulty ; that which is a difficulty for the whole race 
is no difficulty for you personally. If you are studying 
the doctrine of Providence, and cannot reconcile the 
freedom of your own individual will with the provi- 
dence of God — I have never got over it — is that any 
reason why we should surrender our trust in God ? 
or surrender our intellect and say, " Because I cannot 
overleap this barrier I will have no confidence in my 
own intellect hereafter ? " There is a wall of ada- 
mant that bounds all human intelligence, and when- 
ever we have reached it it is the part of wisdom to 
say, " Clearly that is the limit ; I can go thus far and 
no farther." The man who tries to penetrate it 
meets with no better success than breaking his own 
head against the wall. There is no wisdom, no man- 
liness of understanding in that. But within that 
limit it is our duty, each of us, to be men. When 
we find that an insoluble difficulty comes up, admit 
that it is only because we are men that it is insolu- 
ble ; the difficulty is not in our individual nature, 
but in the nature of the race. God has put our un- 
derstanding within us as his lamp ; it is a light which 
he has put there ; but it is a lamp which we our- 
selves must keep supplied with oil ; if we do not 
nourish the flame, God will not keep it alive. If 
you do not use your intellect in your business and 
intercourse with men, in reading and in studying 
the Scriptures, your capacity of judging will become 



2g6 Living Words. 

less and less vigorous, and if you do not increase the 
stores of your own knowledge the lamp will burn 
dimmer, and instead of a bright white light a dim 
flame will arise, and at last no flame at all, not even 
smoke, will survive, and all will be cold and dead. 
Keep it alive, that lamp of God, for your own sake, 
and the sake of Him who gave it ! 

Young men ought to be manly and self-reliant, as 
far as is compatible with humility and child-like 
simplicity. Be manly — not in supposing that you 
know a great deal ; you do not ; young men cannot 
know a great deal ; knowledge comes by experience, 
by study, by years ; it does not come by nature or by 
instinct.* You can get it by industry, by persever- 
ance, by loving it, but not by simply thinking that 
you have it. Do not suppose that in urging you to 
be manly in understanding you are urged to be con- 
ceited ; quite the reverse. Manly character is man- 
ifested in acquisition. You can acquire more knowl- 
edge between ten and twenty than between twenty 
and thirty ; nay, the first ten years are the years of 
greatest acquisition, and perhaps in the first two one 
learns more than in any two that follow. A little 
babe knows nothing. It opens its eyes upon a whole 
vast universe of mystery. It knows nothing ; it has 
to learn the air and light, and all the elements that 
surround it, and all the objects in the wide world, 
beginning with the room about it. What a wil- 



The Wisdom of Childhood. 297 

derness of objects are about it, all of which it 
must learn ! It knows nothing of distance ; it does 
not know whether its mother is one foot or a thou- 
sand miles distant. It has the whole language to 
learn, and then to learn the name of every object in 
the wide world with which it has to do. Think what 
it learns in the first two, in the first ten, in the first 
twenty years ! Between thirty and forty comes to 
be the time to judge and decide, to use the intellect 
and reason ; the time earlier than that is the time of 
acquisition. What a wonderful truth there is under- 
lying the old story of the Sibyl, who made the offer of 
her treasures once, twice, thrice, each time diminishing 
the amount of the offer. Nine books were offered 
once and refused ; six books were offered once and 
refused ; and when the third offer came there were 
only three, and they were accompanied by the threat 
that if that last offer were rejected there would come 
no more. Knowledge comes to you now in the days 
of your youth like the Sibyl with her whole store, and 
offers it ; decline her offer for the next ten years, and 
she comes with a diminished stock ; ten years more 
and three fourths are gone, and when she comes with 
her last offering her declaration will be, " Take this 
or you receive nothing." 

Be manly, then, in acquiring knowledge ; in getting 
a deep knowledge of the word of God, of the ethical 
relations that bind you to your fellows, and of the 



298 Living Words 

duty you owe to the world ; go manfully forth, and do 
your work in the world ; exercise manliness first in 
the acquisition of knowledge, and then in the prac- 
tical use of the understanding. Manliness will im- 
ply not only courage, but humility — and you must 
exercise humility, simply because you have not had 
the experience that others have had ; with that hu- 
mility coupling manly determination to do whatever 
God brings to you to do ; and, with an eye single to 
his glory, use your faculties, relying upon them as far 
as God gives and preserves them, and so in under- 
standing be men ! 



The Choir of Virtues. 299 



XVIII. 
THE CHOIR OF VIRTUES. 

Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowl- 
edge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godli- 
ness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness 
charity. — 2 Peter i, 5-7. 



Striking examples of single virtues have never been 
wanting in any age of the world. The heroes of 
ancient times were not all imaginary or legendary 
beings ; many of them were men of singular virtue 
in particular lines of human conduct. Aristides, for 
instance, was just long before Christ appeared upon 
the earth ; the patriotism of Leonidas rilled the world 
with his fame; the equanimity of Epictetus is a 
model to this day ; and so I might exhaust the cata- 
logue of virtues one by one, and find in history, ancient 
or modern, stirring examples of each of them. But, 
brethren, it remained for Christianity to present a 
complete model of human character, which had never 
been presented before ; to reveal a complete, thorough, 
and symmetrical morality, perfect in all its parts, and 
perfect in their combination. 



300 Living Words. 

The passage I have chosen in your hearing this 
morning presents such a combination. We have 
been too much accustomed to consider this pas- 
sage as merely a list of virtues that might be read as 
well backward as forward — separated, and each put 
in the form of an injunction, one in one place and 
one in another ; as if the apostle had thrown them 
together fortuitously and without arrangement or 
sequence. In so viewing the passage we miss a 
great part of its power. You may find these sep- 
arate virtues enjoined in other places of the New 
Testament, and many of them are enjoined in the 
law of nature and in systems of natural morality. It 
is the combination of them here, and the relation 
they bear to each other, the source from which they 
spring, and, so to speak, the aim and tendency of 
them, that forms the peculiar merit of the text to 
which I invite your attention. I might illustrate 
what I mean by saying briefly that each of these 
virtues has been considered as a gem, and that, 
taken up and examined, each by itself, they are 
thought to be a fine collection of jewels. Ah, 
brethren, it is not so ; these are not single and 
individual gems, but each is part of a complete 
and perfect piece of jewelry, wrought out by the 
hands of the great Artificer himself, and unless 
we contemplate them as such in this their com- 
bination to each other, and in the beautiful setting 



The Choir of Virtues. 301 

which God has given them — the frame-work, so to 
speak, of faith, which is the golden bond that holds 
them all together, and at the same time not merely 
illustrates and sets forth the beauty of each, but 
keeps them and clasps them together — if we do 
not so contemplate them, we do not get the full 
Christian idea of the virtues at all ! 

Or take an illustration from another single word 
— the word choir. This word contains in its etymol- 
ogy an allusion to the old Greek comedy, which had 
a leader and a series of singers or chorus, sometimes 
singing, sometimes speaking, and performing an im- 
portant part in the drama, and there was a person 
who responded to the leader of the chorus, and so 
there was a union kept up by the leader at # the 
beginning and the person charged with winding up 
the chorus at the end. The figure of the chorus, or 
choir, may be aptly applied to the Christian combi- 
nation of virtues. The choragus, or leader of the 
chorus, is faith, which is in fact the foundation of 
the virtues, and the train is wound up with love, 
which is the highest aim and culminating point of 
all Christian virtue. 

You observe that faith is the foundation of all 
Christian character. You have been taught this over 
and over again from this pulpit. So far as my own 
teaching is concerned, I have spoken to little pur- 
pose if you have not learned from it that there is no 



302 Living Words. 

Christianity where there is no faith ; that faith is the 
bond which unites man with God ; that it was so in 
the beginning in Eden ; that the rupture of this bond 
was the primal sin of all sins men commit ; that 
infidelity is still the primal fount and source of all 
transgression. That faith is the bond of union be- 
tween God and man, and that there can be no con- 
nection between God and man without it, is taken 
for granted at the very foundation of the Christian 
life. 

Taking that broad and fundamental foundation for 
granted, we are charged to build upon it a structure 
of moral character under the guidance of God's 
word, under the impulse of God's Spirit ; and this is 
the process of Christian sanctification, and it is to 
this process that these words apply. For whatever 
else sanctification is, rest assured it is ethical at 
bottom, moral in its essence and fruits. The work 
of the Holy Spirit in the heart has for its very end 
the formation of a pure and holy character. It was 
for this purpose that Christ was manifest, that he 
might destroy the works of the devil, and present before 
the world a pure, good, and peculiar people, zealous 
of good works. What then are the elements of this 
Christian character, and these virtues as set forth ? I 
have said that they are all beautifully combined to- 
gether, and all harmonize in the formation of a 
perfect character. A very little analysis will per- 



The Choir of Virtues. 303 

haps suffice to show this still more clearly. Shall I 
say that we find set forth, first, the duties we owe 
to ourselves — courage, knowledge, temperance, pa- 
tience ; then the duties we owe to God, summed up 
in the one single word, godliness or piety ; and then 
the duties we owe to our fellows, summed up in the 
two other words, brotherly kindness and charity ? 
You may have never thought of this analysis before, 
or that there was in this text any thing like a system 
of ethics, and yet all you can say in connection with 
any system of ethics is here--— personal virtues, vir- 
tues in our relation to God and in our relation to our 
fellow-men. There is nothing more you can say, 
nothing beyond this in ethics apart from Christian- 
ity ; all is here. There are some branches of ethics 
not especially named in this classification, but they 
all spring out of it. 

Or they might be classed perhaps in two divisions : 
the personal virtues of the Christian and the social 
virtues of the Christian, as springing out of his 
faith and leading into it — -the personal virtues, cour- 
age, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness ; the 
social virtues, relating to his dealings with his fel- 
lows, brotherly kindness and charity. 

" Add to your faith virtue." The word virtue I 
shall not use in the ordinary sense in which it has 
come to be regarded : the apostle used it in the 
legitimate sense of the Latin word from which it is 



304 Living Words. 

derived — courage, boldness, manliness — that which 
constituted the chief glory of man in the old heathen 
estimation, and was to a certain extent carried over 
in a sanctified and elevated sense into the Chris- 
tian ethics of the New Testament. There is no 
place in the system of Christian morality for coward- 
ice or imbecility, They strangely err who suppose 
our faith can be manifested by cowardice. There 
is among men of the world a sneering way of treat- 
ing of Christianity as if it were, in and of itself, 
imbecile, or tending to imbecility and weakness of 
character. Whether we look at the precepts of the 
Bible, or the grand historical examples of the Bible, 
or the development of the Christian life among men 
in history — and these are the tests by which any 
theory or system should be tried — we shall find that 
the noblest illustrations of courage and manliness, in 
the highest and purest sense of the word, have been 
afforded in connection with Christianity. A stren- 
uous tone and vigor of soul is the language in which 
we should interpret this word "virtue." We want 
this boldness in standing up for the truth of God, in 
the example which we ourselves shall set in keeping 
to our religious faith in time of trouble and adver- 
sity. You may say, The time for such examples has 
passed away. It was very well for Paul and Peter to 
exhibit such heroism when a man had to take his 
life in his hand, but we do not want these endow- 



The Choir of Virtues. 305 

ments now. Ah, brethren, we need to pray just as 
earnestly now as Peter and John prayed in the midst 
of a threatening and persecuting mob, " O Lord, 
grant that with all boldness we may speak thy word ! " 
He deceives himself sadly who thinks that the time 
of conflict is over ; that it is possible now to be car- 
ried to heaven on " flowery beds of ease." Now as ever, 

They that mean to win the prize 
Must sail through bloody seas. 

The work is not yet done, the battle is not yet 
over ; nay, my brethren, the very heat of it is to 
begin. The worst weapons of the adversary are 
yet kept in his hellish arsenal : we are only at the 
beginning of them. If I have correctly read the 
prophecies of this Book, the greatest demands upon 
the Church of God for boldness, energy, and self- 
sacrifice have yet to be made upon it Nay, how 
much of boldness do you not need in your daily 
occupations and intercourse with men ! You are 
living in a world, after all, hostile to Christ Your 
every-day business is hostile to Christ ; not that 
there is any thing in trade or business necessarily 
hostile to Christ, but these are not sanctified ; the 
world has not given itself up to Christ, the world's 
trade and activities are not consecrated to Christ ; 
and, having to do with the world, we need to be 
bold, in order to show ourselves true citizens of the 

great city of God. 

20 



306 Living Words. 

We sometimes think Pilate showed a great deal of 
weakness when he most needed manliness and cour- 
age — upon the bench, when, satisfied of the inno- 
cence of Christ, yet fond of flattering the mob, 
he let him go, lest there should be a tumult, to 
that painful death upon Calvary. We do not need 
to go back many generations in history to find men 
sitting upon the bench as judges, and professing to 
be Christian men, not as that poor Pilate was — a 
simple searcher after the truth — but men who pro- 
fess to have found the everlasting truth, and to be hold- 
ing an even scale of justice in their hands, affording in- 
stances of greater weakness ; yielding in the face of 
light, sometimes for filthy lucre, sometimes for fear 
of loss of honor, as Pilate feared the dread power of 
the mob ; in any case showing more weakness and 
deeper sinfulness than Pilate. So, too, we think of 
the rich young man who came to the Lord Jesus, to 
all appearance seeking earnestly for the salvation of 
his soul — as he no doubt was sincerely seeking — 
and asking the Master what he should do to be 
saved ; and when Christ came to the last injunction, 
and said, " Sell all thou hast and give to the poor," 
we think he was weak, and lacked the strenuous 
courage that the Holy Spirit gives to the Christian 
life. He was willing to believe, but when it came to 
adding to his faith courage to do the very deed that 
was to be the test of his devotion, then he failed. 



The Choir of Virtues. 307 

My brethren, if the same injunction were brought to 
you to-day, do you suppose that you would do any 
better ? If a poor wretcjied beggar comes to your 
door to-morrow, no matter whether he has made him- 
self a beggar by his own drunkenness and debauchery 
or not, will you not turn him away ? If the Church 
of Christ comes with a demand for a small portion 
of your abundance, you have excuses enough, plau- 
sible, rational, and sensible, according to the world's 
mode of viewing these things, to turn the application 
away. Remember that young man in the Gospel, 
and do not call him weak until you have examined 
into your own weakness, and found out the secret 
source of it. Christianity requires courage now as 
much as ever it did, and the demands are to be stronger 
yet ; you will be called upon to make greater sacrifices 
instead of less ; to do more individually with your 
money and in your efforts for the advancement of 
the cause of Christ. Add to your faith courage, and 
be bold to- do your Master's work. 

This courage is not all that you are to have. " And 
to virtue knowledge ;" temper your energy and zeal 
with discretion. Perhaps it is not necessary to say 
any thing on this point to this congregation, for I do 
not think there are any of us who have not discretion 
enough. And yet the injunction is here, and the 
tendency in human nature, after all, is to run to an 
extreme, so that zeal becomes fanaticism. Zeal 



308 Living Words. 

which is not according to knowledge, faith which is not 
accompanied by growth in the knowledge of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, is in an unsafe condition. Even this 
very passage of Peter is filled with exhortation to 
knowledge. " Grace and peace be multiplied unto 
you " — how ? " Through the knowledge of God and 
of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath 
given unto us all things." And the winding up of the 
whole passage is, " grow in grace and in the knowl- 
edge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." And 
perhaps this lesson may be more needed by the 
young than by the old, who have got discretion with 
their years. See, then, that all your courageous devo- 
tion be accompanied by a studious advancement in 
the knowledge of the Lord. Make the word of God 
the source of this knowledge, and you shall find such 
lessons of wisdom and discretion as will prevent you 
from running into the errors of a vain enthusiasm or 
fanaticism. There is no " one idea " about Christian- 
ity either in its theology or in its morals ; all is sym- 
metrical and harmonious ; and we find in this passage, 
and in numerous other passages of the Scriptures, 
ample warning against that morality which runs itself 
out in one idea. Be bold enough to take up an idea 
when it requires to be made prominent, but add to 
your courage knowledge, and rein in your activity, if 
necessary, by Christian discretion. 

The next element is temperance, and to temper- 



The Choir of Virtues. 309 

ance is conjoined patience. Or, to express it in other 
words, the elements of success in life consist of bearing 
and forbearing, and these two things are patience and 
temperance. Or, to express it again in the formula 
of old heathen writers on morality, Abstain and sus- 
tain ; forbearing or abstaining being temperance, and 
having relation to prosperity ; and sustaining or 
bearing having relation to adversity. Our life is a 
life of either prosperity or adversity, or at least it is 
comparatively one or the other. Sometimes we are 
doing well in our outward circumstances, prosperous 
in our families, our children living and getting on 
well around us ; or we are unfortunate, and death 
invades our family circle, and blow after blow falls 
upon us. My text provides the duty for each of these 
conditions of human life. In your prosperous days 
add to your faith courage, and to courage knowledge, 
and take the great lesson of temperance — modera- 
tion in indulgence, moderation in what may appear 
your social duties ; and then, when your day of adver- 
sity or sorrow comes, be patient — patient in the suf- 
fering under the injuries men may inflict upon you ; 
patient under the infirmities of others with whom 
you may be associated. Abstain from extravagant 
shows ; sustain all that may come upon you in the 
order of divine arrangements into which you are 
thrown. 

These virtues are knitted together by the last of 



31Q Living Words. 

this class of personal duties — piety towards God. 
This duty is not to be taken in so broad a sense as 
to include all faith, goodness, holiness, but the duty of 
piety in the exercise of reverence, of worship ; in a 
continual sense of the divine presence. It is thus 
that piety binds together these other virtues, and 
keeps them from falling asunder. So our duties 
should be bound each to each by constant reference 
to God, morning, noon, and night, in prayer, and by 
a sort of understood reference in every hour of every 
day's life ; having God and our duties to God under- 
stood in the course of our business, in our relations 
to society and each other ; then we shall be more 
faithful, more knowing, more temperate, more patient. 
Let us glance at the social virtues which spring out 
of the personal and depend upon them, and which have 
a beautiful illustration in the text and in the course 
of our human life. Add to your godliness brotherly 
kindness and charity. These social duties are sub- 
divided into those which belong to the inner house- 
hold, and those which belong to the wider sphere of 
life. And here the text has special point for those 
recently admitted into the Church. A good deal of 
our advancement in grace will depend upon our love 
of the brethren. This is made a test of Christian 
character by every one of the apostles. John makes 
it almost the sole test. " Hereby we know we love 
God, because we love the brethren." Do not attempt 



The Choir of Virtues. 3 1 1 

to keep up a Christian character without this element. 
I have known men to be members of a Church for 
ten, twenty, or thirty years, and have no more sym- 
pathy for those who sat in the next pew than if they 
belonged to some other Church ; men who are, per- 
haps, hard and unsympathizing by nature. If there 
be any such here, do not put this matter off by say- 
ing, " That is my nature, and I cannot get over it. I 
am not an especially unsympathizing person, but do 
not find it easy to make outward demonstration 
of the affection that is within." A sanctified Chris- 
tian loves the brethren, and the more of Christ he 
has, the more he loves Christ's Church that He has 
purchased with His own blood. And if you have 
an indisposition to Christian communion, strive to 
overcome it ; be punctual at your class-meeting every 
week for the next three months, and cherish in your 
heart this love for your neighbor and your brethren. 
Cultivate cordial and social intercourse with those 
who are members of the same Church, and keep up a 
closer, warmer fellowship for them. Oh for a bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost upon the Church, that all its 
members may love one another ; love the character 
of each other, the interests of each other, the per- 
sonal virtues of each other ! that all this may be a 
matter of individual interest and mutual sympathy ! 
Brotherly kindness implies a relation in the Church 
and the duties that spring from that relation ; and 



3 1 2 Living Words. 

after it, last of all, comes charity, which is still wider 
in its scope, and includes the other in itself. It is 
put at the end, as the culmination of the Christian 
virtues. Shall I go back to the figure I used at 
the beginning, and say, if you make a bracelet out 
of these virtues, that faith is the golden setting that 
holds them all together, and that courage, knowl- 
edge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kind- 
ness — that these are the pearls that are set about 
it ; some of them a little larger than the others, and 
apparently more costly, but still each a pearl of great 
price, and in the centre of them all this diamond of 
everlasting worth, the purest of the list, because it 
shines with the light of God, and God is love. Add 
to your brotherly kindness the expansive love that 
takes in all men ; that knows not the limit of Church 
or sect, of fellowship or communion, but says to 
all that are members of Christ's Church of every 
name, " These are my brethren," and that goes be- 
yond the limit of Christ's Church, and says to the 
outcast and the worldling, " These, too, are purchased 
with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ," and that 
wanders beyond the limits of our native land and 
over seas to distant climes, and says to men of dusky 
hue, " All these are bought with the blood of Jesus 
Christ — these are my brethren." It is to this broad 
and expansive affection that the text invites you. 
Add to brotherly kindness, charity — a love of every 



The Choir of Virtues. 313 

human being, the worst and lowest — not because 
he is bad, but love him because he is a human being, 
made in the image of God, bought by the sacrifice 
of Christ, and may enter into the gates of the eternal 
city, to be with you in that immortal fellowship ever- 
more ; and because as such you owe him certain 
duties — kindness, sympathy, love, active personal 
self-sacrifice, if need be, for his conversion, for his 
advancement, growth, and elevation in the scale of 
civilization. 

I think you will agree with me that my text has 
afforded, not an unconnected series of injunctions, 
but a symmetrical combination, forming a perfect 
Christian character. I would call your attention 
to the healthful tone of the sanctification of which 
the text speaks and the Bible every-where speaks. 
There is nothing false or meretricious, nothing of 
morbid sentimentalism, about it. There is the devel- 
opment of all that is tender and lovely in our human 
nature, but there is nothing mawkish or lackadaisical 
about it. These virtues are sturdy, substantial virtues, 
and, when combined, their combination forms a perfect 
character. There is no sanctification enjoined in this 
text, or anywhere else in the word of God, in the 
sense of seclusion or keeping away, even from wicked 
people. The whole system of monasticism and seclu- 
sion, and shutting ourselves away from our fellow- 
men, plausible I admit it is, and has seduced some 



3 M Living Words. 

of the very purest minds in the whole Church of God 
for ages after ages — perhaps the very purest have 
been found within the limits of monasteries — but the 
idea is false, and contrary to God's plans for the prop- 
agation of the Gospel. And what has been the con- 
sequence ? The outcropping fruit of it was destruc- 
tion and death. The whole monastic system ended — 
for what is now upon the earth is only the shadow 
of what it used to be — in the foulest corruption. 
The very aim of Christianity is that we shall exercise 
brotherly love and charity. What sort of an exercise 
of it would it be for me to have my head shaved and 
wear no matter what kind of a garment in token 
of humiliation, and live in a cell in meditative seclu- 
sion ? Any imitation of monasticism ought to be 
avoided. I should say that the imitation of it, even 
in so small and accidental a way as in the matter 
of peculiar dress, partakes of the same false char- 
acter, and will, in the long run, lead to similar evil 
results. That excellent society called the Society 
of Friends or Quakers has been hampered in the 
development of the Christian life and the propagation 
of the Gospel by the adoption of a peculiar dress. 

I do not mean that it is right for us to follow the 
fashion of the time, whatever that fashion may be, 
in any kind of extravagance. It is the tendency of 
the human mind to run into extremes. Put a 
drunken man on horseback, and he will oscillate 



The Choir of Virtues. 315 

from side to side, now on this side, now on that, in 
vain endeavoring to keep the balance of a well- 
trained rider. There is no warrant in Christianity 
for wasteful or foolish expenditure or outlay upon the 
person. All this is to be ruled by temperance and 
moderation, so as to run into no extreme. But, on 
the other hand, the attempt to mark this Church, or 
that, by a uniform or regimentals, and so to separate 
it and set it apart from the world, is part of the old 
monastic idea, and must come to nought. 

Our duty is to live in this world, and do all the 
good we can in it. We are put in a certain system of 
society which God upholds as the very theatre of His 
kingdom upon the earth. It is here that the great 
problem of the world's salvation is to be wrought out ; 
and you and I, as individual agents for Christ's king- 
dom, are to do His work. You may mingle with all 
men of every class and every creed ; you have no 
need to shrink from them ; but take care that you 
fall not into the ways of these men from sheer cow- 
ardice, on the one hand trying to save your soul, 
on the other hand yielding to the current and think- 
ing you are safe because you go with the stream. 
You are put into a worldly atmosphere, but only to 
purify it. You are, perhaps, a student. Your studies 
are to be secular studies — science, literature — apart 
from the study of the word of God ; and yet none 
of these studies is secular if consecrated to the serv- 



316 Living Words. 

ice of God. And so it is in every walk of life. If 
we have faith at bottom we shall consecrate our 
activities in all lines of duty to God's service. But 
remember, he that lacketh these things is blind, and 
cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was 
purged from his old sins. That is to say, as a back- 
slider he has wandered among the dogs and sorcer- 
ers of the earth, has surrendered his primal, trusting 
faith, and has returned to all his old evil ways. Ah, 
if there be a backsliding soul here to-day may God's 
Spirit reach it and bring it back again, and make its 
calling and election sure ! 



Love Unutterable. 317 



XIX. 
LOVE UNUTTERABLE. 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life. — yohn iil, 16. 



There may be some of you who will say that this 
class of themes is too often introduced ; that exhibi- 
tions of the love of God through Christ, however 
beautiful they may be, are not the most practical 
subjects to be taken up in the pulpit. Brethren, it 
is with this as with every other doctrine of Scrip- 
ture. In the word of God doctrines are only presented 
practically and for practical ends. This doctrine — the 
doctrine of redemption by Christ — rests upon a great 
fact, the history of which is recorded here ; the great- 
est fact in the whole history of humanity. The ap- 
plication of that fact in the salvation of the race of 
mankind is the most practical thing with which 
mankind can be concerned. The preaching of the 
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is, in fact, the sum 
and substance of our Gospel preaching, and must be 
so if we are faithful to our trust. 



318 Living Words. 

Is the theme unattractive ? Not so, certainly, 
for those whose souls are filled with love to God ; 
they that hear the most of it are those that love it 
most ; and they that love it most desire to hear the 
most of it. Those that are deepest bathed in the 
love of the Lord Jesus Christ look most longingly 
for fresh showers of his love ; just as the water lily, 
in the midst of waters, unfolds its broad leaves, and 
opens its petals to receive the refreshing showers with 
a fresher and more earnest sympathy than does the 
parched shrub in the sandy desert. It is only the 
soul that has no love that does not care to hear of 
love ; and so, if we love God, we are never tired of 
hearing the story of His love through Christ ; and if 
we do not love Him, there is no story that ought 
to be brought oftener to our ears. For, after all, if 
" the Son of man, when he is lifted up," does not 
draw men's hearts unto Him, there is no other power 
that will ; if the cross of Christ be not a loadstone 
for your soul, there is no magnetism in heaven or 
earth that can draw you from your sins ; if there be 
for you no beauty in this picture, then turn to the 
world's pictures, for they are all that you can look upon. 
On the other hand, for souls that feel the need of the 
Saviour, or those that have sought and found salva- 
tion in Jesus Christ as a Redeemer, this theme is 
ever pleasant ; and when we preach on any theme, 
no matter how far it may be apparently removed from 



Love Unutterable. 319 

this great theme of redemption by Christ, this will 
be the foundation — the backbone, so to speak — of 
every structure we may attempt to rear. And so, 
when preaching upon other doctrines — as the matter 
of education, the subject of missionary enterprise, 
the forms of public worship, the practical exercise of 
Christian charity and benevolence, no matter what — 
if the preacher's heart is imbued with the love of 
God and his mind is awake to the full breadth of his 
mission, and at the same time to the narrowness of 
it, you will always recognize as the thread upon 
which the pearls of his thought may be strung — if he 
has pearls of thought to show you — the doctrine of 
man's salvation through a crucified Redeemer. And 
so, too, if you look back upon your own experience in 
listening to sermons, you remember that whenever you 
caught a glimpse of that cross shining, though through 
a subject quite foreign, your heart has always been 
touched, you have been quickened, and an instant 
joy diffused through your mind, which rendered you 
more awake to the rest of the discourse than you 
would otherwise have been. If you listen to a new 
composition of music quite foreign to any thing you 
have been in the habit of hearing, you may listen un- 
moved for ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes, when sud- 
denly there comes, in the midst of the. complication 
of strange harmony, a single measure of a mel- 
ody to which your ear has been accustomed, and 



320 L iving Words. 

which twined itself around your heart long years 
ago ; it quickens the musical thought within you, and 
connects itself with those tender associations, and 
you are at once able to enjoy all the rest. So it is, or 
so it should be, with this exposition of the doctrine of 
the Son of God : there is no sermon in which we 
should not be willing to behold the cross of the bleed- 
ing Saviour. 

In our text we find two things with regard to this 
theme. First, the ground of God's purpose in the 
redemption of the world. The ground of it lies in 
his love. " God so loved the world that He gave 
his only begotten Son." And, secondly, the purpose 
of God in the redemption of the world, namely, that 
" whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." And these are the two points 
to be made in the discourse. 

First, the ground of God's purpose in the redemp- 
tion of the world, as set forth in this passage. If 
you are well read in books of theology you will find 
that there has been a vast deal of controversy concern- 
ing the ground and source of God's purpose in the 
redemption of mankind : some maintaining that it was 
intended to vindicate God's mercy, others that it was 
to exemplify his justice, and so through a variety of 
opinions. Tb,e simplest is the most natural interpre- 
tation. In view of the whole word of God, and 
especially of such passages as this, the simplest 



ft 

Love Unutterable. 321 

meaning is that which the text gives, that, after all, 
we need look no further than to the love of God for 
the source of His mercy in redemption. 

Sometimes we think of the scheme of Christian 
salvation through Christ as the result of a sort of 
conflict between the attributes of God : a strife be- 
tween His inherent justice demanding the destruction 
of a guilty world, and, on the other hand, His mercy 
and love desiring to save the world. I have heard a 
great deal of incautious statement in the pulpit on 
this subject, and have seen incautious pictures, 
painted by skillful artists, of such sort as this, for in- 
stance : the Mercy of God on one hand pleading anx- 
iously, with uplifted hands and streaming eyes, and 
on the other side Justice, with stern countenance 
and drawn sword, standing ready to cut down the 
sinner and the world of sinners : the conflict going on 
between them, and, as it were, the Almighty mind 
listening to the arguments, and at last inclining to 
the side of Mercy, AH this may be very dramatic and 
very striking, but unfortunately it is not true. The 
preacher may conjure up a mighty and grand combi- 
nation of figures, an apotheosis of faculties of his 
own which he transfers to God. But in all this we 
lose sight of the character of God— the one true God 
in whom there can be no conflict ; in whose eternal 
mind there never has been any conflict ; in whose 
all-seeing intellect there never can be a shadow, a 

n 



322 Living Words. 

moment of doubt or uncertainty ; in whose almighty 
heart there never has been any but the vastest and 
most unbounded love ; in such pictures we lose sight 
of the character of God, who is all love, all mercy, all 
compassion. 

So we are told by this very same evangelist in the 
fourth chapter of the first epistle : " He that loveth 
not knoweth not God," and why ? " For," says he — 
and it is the best definition for our poor souls of 
the character of God given us in the Bible — "for 
God is love :" it is inherent in God to love, the es- 
sence of God is love, and the approach unto God on 
the part of man is an approach in the way of love. 
Our character approximates more and more to the 
character of God just in proportion to the amount 
of our love. And that family in which there is most 
love is most like the family of heaven ; and that 
nation in which there is most love is purest and 
best ; and when the world shall come to be all full 
of love, then, and no sooner, will wars, oppressions, 
and cruelties cease upon the earth ; then " man's 
inhumanity to man " shall no longer " make count- 
less thousands mourn." So we find from the very 
nature of God, as well as from this and other texts, 
that we are to seek the root and ground of Christ's 
plan of salvation in the love of God the Father. "In 
this was manifested the love of God toward us, be- 
cause that God sent his only begotten Son into the 



Love Unutterable. 323 

world that we might live through him." In the 
words of one of our most beautiful hymns, 

" But when we view thy strange design 

To save rebellious worms, 
Where vengeance and compassion join 

In their divinest forms, 
Here the whole Deity is known." 

Here is the manifestation of God's love unto the 
world ; here in the gift of Christ, and it is nowhere 
else for you or for me. 

There is obviously in the text an allusion to 
the passage in Genesis — the history of Abraham's 
offering of his son Isaac — and the words of Christ 
to Nicodemus could not fail to remind Nicodemus 
of the love that was required in Abraham's sac- 
rifice. It was his son ; it was his only son, Isaac ; 
it was his only son, Isaac, whom he loved. The text 
reminded Nicodemus then, and ought to remind us 
now, of the love that was required in Abraham's sac- 
rifice ; then, also, of the substitution that was made in 
that case for Abraham's sacrifice ; finally, of the 
promise given to Abraham in view of his obedience. 
" The angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of 
heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I 
sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this 
thing " — observe now the next verse — " and hast not 
withheld thy son, thine only son," then says God, " I 
promise, and swear as well as promise, " that in bless- 



524 Living Words. 

ing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will mul- 
tiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand 
which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall pos- 
sess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast 
obeyed my voice." That is the covenant made with 
Abraham, the covenant by virtue of which Christ 
came out of the family of David, at once the root and 
the offspring of David ; that is the covenant in the 
fulfilment of which, in the fulness of time, God was 
manifest in the flesh in Jesus Christ, who was sent to 
take upon himself the form of a servant for the re- 
demption of mankind. 

In that seed all the nations of the earth have been 
blessed. And why ? Simply because of that one act 
of obedience ? Did Abraham produce by that act o r 
his this grand promise, of which all the history of 
all nations, from that day to this, has only been the 
partial fulfilment ? — this promise, of which all history 
that is to come, with all the pomp of its vast displays 
of power in science and in arts, shall only be a 
part of the great fulfilment — was this promise made 
to Abraham as a payment for this one act of obe- 
dience ? No, brethren, we cannot for a moment look 
at it so. How, then, can we look at it, if not in this 
way ? That this whole transaction between Abra- 
ham and God, in the gift of his son Isaac, was part of 
God's plan of revealing Himself and the mode of 



Love Unutterable. 325 

salvation to the world. It was a prophecy, uncon- 
scious doubtless on the part of Abraham, but a 
prophecy which God meant should be fully displayed 
in due time by that other sacrifice, in which a Son 
more beloved than Isaac, an only Son, and an only 
Son of God, should be laid upon an altar, and no 
substitute for Him be found ; that other sacrifice, 
which was to wind up in the history of the world all 
forms of sacrifice ; that altar, which was to be the 
last upon which, for ever and ever, a sacrificial pyre 
should burn upon which God could look with com- 
placency ; that victim, which was to be the last 
victim, and the only one on whom could be laid 
the iniquities of men ; it was to foreshadow that 
altar and that sacrifice that this touching scene 
occurred upon the mountain of Moriah : it was to 
let men know, at least by a glimpse of what was 
to come, that God meant some day to show forth 
his mercy to mankind. So at least we are taught 
to regard it in the New Testament ; and one of 
the richest passages in the New Testament is 
nothing but an allusion to this sacrifice of Abraham. 
In the eighth chapter of the Romans and thirty-sec- 
ond verse we read : " He that spared not His 
own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how 
shall he not with Him also freely give us all 
things ? " Do you not see the allusion in that pass- 
age ? In Genesis the promise is, " Because thou 



326 Living Words. 

hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy son, 
thine only son." 

Contrast this manifestation of God's love with any 
other occasion in the history of the world and you 
will find it is the greatest. But I dare not attempt 
to make such a comparison, to compare the love of 
God in the gift of his Son for the redemption of the 
world with any display of love that could come out 
of such hearts as ours ; the infinite with the finite. 
There is a passage in St. Bernard very striking, not 
so much for the matter as the arrangement, a series 
or gradation, by which he endeavored to draw up the 
the hearts of his hearers to higher and grander 
thoughts of divine love. He says, first, It was God 
who loved us when we, poor creatures of His, ought 
to have loved Him first. Secondly, he goes on, He 
loved us, such as we were. It was while we were 
yet sinners that Christ died for us. Thirdly, He 
that loved us, that is greater than the heavens, and 
that made the heavens and the earth, He deigns to 
come down to us that are but dust and ashes, and 
say to each one of us, " Let me be your Saviour ! " 
The Almighty says this to you and to me by this 
text this morning. Let us endeavor to raise our 
poor hearts to the contemplation of this vast love ; 
let us exalt our Saviour in our thoughts and feelings, 
as we endeavor to think of God's infinite love to us ; 
let us endeavor to catch one glimpse of that tran- 



Love Unutterable. 327 

scendent beauty which shines forever from the cross 
of our Saviour. 

" O Love Divine, how sweet thou art, 
When shall I find my willing heart 
All taken up by thee ! " 

Is this our utterance this morning ? 

" Stronger His love than death or hell ; 
Its riches are unsearchable ; 

The first-born sons of light 
Desire in vain its depths to see ; 
They cannot reach the mystery, 

The length, the breadth, the height." 

God grant that we may feel this day, each one for 
himself, that love which passeth knowledge ! 

And now let us glance, in the second place, at the 
purpose of God in the redemption of mankind. You 
will observe that the latter part of the sixteenth verse 
is but a repetition of the fifteenth. "As Moses lifted 
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the 
Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish but have everlasting life." 
Within two or three lines we have a duplication of 
this statement, as if to fix, by this reiteration, the 
thought in our mind of the full character of God's 
purpose in this display of his mercy and love, that 
mankind should not perish, but have everlasting life. 

The substance of the purpose and its extent 
are both set forth in the text. It implies the 
danger of perishing, on the part of mankind, as all 



328 Living Words, 

the Bible does ; that mankind was perishing, had 
perished ; that the human race had been separated 
from God, the author of the race ; that there was 
a great gulf fixed between man and God. This 
fact the text presupposes. Time and again I have 
endeavored to enforce upon you this great truth, 
that the whole world out of Christ lieth in wick- 
edness ; and I have appealed to your own individ- 
ual consciousness for your own individual condi- 
tion, and I appeal to it now, and make no other 
point. Not a single man or woman in this house, 
upon an honest, sincere scrutiny of his own indi- 
vidual heart, can say that his life, and thoughts, and 
feelings have been pure before Almighty God. Is 
there one ? Is there a single man or woman who will 
rise up to-day in this congregation and say that he 
is the immaculate one ? Is there one here who would 
be entitled of his own justice, purity, and virtue to take 
charge of his brethren, and be their censor and 
teacher ? It is not I, I am sure. And if this is the 
case with each of us in his own individual personal 
consciousness, do you suppose the consciousness of 
the rest of mankind differs from yours ? that you are 
worse than they ? Never, unless in some access of 
great conviction from the Holy Spirit like that which 
induced the Apostle Paul to say he was the chief of 
sinners. On the contrary, you think you are as good 
as your neighbors, and perhaps better. But you dare 



Love Unutterable. y2<) 

not, for one moment, titter to yourself the thought 
that your life is a pure one. On the contrary, if you 
give an honest statement, it must be that the prepon- 
derance of thought has been evil, except so far as you 
have taken the great truths of God's holy word, and 
endeavored to frame your habits of life and modes of ac- 
tion upon these laws. This is " perishing ; " this con- 
dition of life is the condition of which the text speaks 
in the word " perishing.'' The man has perished who 
has a preponderance of evil in his nature. Upon this 
broad platform of depravity all men stand together, 
whatever their distinctions may be as to educa- 
tion or place of birth, or the character of their 
civilization. On this broad platform of depravity 
we meet as brethren, black, and white, and red, 
Caucasian, Malay, and every other race of man- 
kind. Under all the mere difference that distin- 
guishes these there is a substantial sameness. Take 
two men from the extremes of society, strip one of 
his purple and the other of his rags, and in both you 
will see the same foundation of personal character, ex- 
cept God makes a distinction by the blessing of His 
Holy Spirit. So then we are all lost. " In Adam," 
to speak in the language of this book, " we have all 
died," and we must die. It was to avert this doom 
that God " gave his only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." " Should not perish " and " have 



330 Love Unutterable. 

everlasting life " present to a certain extent the same 
idea, the latter being an amplification of the former. 
The one expresses the power to avert the doom of 
death ; but the other shows that the doom of death 
is not only averted for the time, or for a time, but 
for evermore. 

And here we ought to dwell for one moment on this 
thought, that the doom is averted, not for the time, 
or for a time, but for evermore. This is the fruit of 
the great salvation which Christ brings. And see 
the point of this thought. We might suppose that 
after death our life was to be prolonged for a hundred 
or two hundred years, or for a series of generations. 
But what security would we have that then it would 
not end ? that after the lapse of a hundred years or 
a hundred centuries there might not come a termi- 
nation or a change ? This is the point of the clause 
which says believers shall have everlasting life, in 
contradistinction to the clause which says they shall 
not perish. By the one we are told that our life 
is prolonged at all events ; by the other that our 
life is prolonged infinitely. We are given here 
the promise that we shall live forever, and that 
promise is fortified and vindicated for us by the 
gift of the Son of God as our Redeemer. " Because I 
live you shall live also." There is the pledge of our 
eternity ; there is the root and ground on which this 
promise rests. He that believeth on Him shall not 



Living Words. 33 1 

perish, but have everlasting life, because he is in- 
corporated with Christ. Christ is the head of this 
new life that comes in with the Gospel, and we are 
heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ in his eter- 
nity. So then, brethren, when you are tempted to 
believt that the Second Person of the Adorable Trin- 
ity is not the Son of God, you may begin to fear that 
the time may come when you shall cease to be ; when 
you believe that that crown, which was once a crown 
of thorns and is now a crown of glory, shall be shaken 
from our Redeemer, then may you well fear that 
the time shall come when your life shall have an end. 
But why talk of these things, except to bring your 
minds up to the height of this great argument ? 

In the salvation that comes to us through Jesus 
Christ we are assured of immortality, and in that 
alone are we assured of it ; because we are united 
with Christ, who is himself inherently immortal, di- 
vine, and so imperishable. We, too, are immortal, 
and shall live forever. When I have passed through 
the gates of that eternal city I shall know that my 
citizenship will last as long as the city itself. Thank 
God for that assurance ? that the salvation of God 
through Christ gives to us the assurance of everlast- 
ing life ! But this everlasting life has a beginning in 
every individual soul ; and this beginning is found in 
the individual soul whenever, sunk in trespasses and 
sins, the soul is quickened unto a new life by the 



33 2 Love Unutterable. 

power of God's Holy Spirit. The believing sinner, we 
are told, passes from death to life here in this world — 
from a death in sin to a life in righteousness. This 
is the beginning of the everlasting life. Its seeds 
are sown in the heart of every believer just when he 
gives his soul to God : its seeds are cast into the soil 
of your heart whenever you open it, and say, " I give 
myself to be redeemed." 

Here, again, we come to the thought of last Sunday 
fortnight, the sin of unbelief. " Whosoever believeth 
in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Or 
take the eighteenth verse with it, " He that believeth 
in Christ is not condemned, but he that believeth 
not is condemned already." Why ? Because he has 
been a sinner ? a transgressor ? an adulterer ? in 
trade dishonest, in person or habits foul ? Not at 
all ; that condemnation is under the law ; but here is 
the condemnation, " Because he hath not believed in 
the name of the only begotten Son of God." Now, 
then, I put it to you again that, if you are persisting 
in the rejection of Christ, you are committing the sin 
of sins by your unbelief in Christ ; that it wraps up 
within itself all other sins ; that in cherishing it you 
cherish the whole circle of transgressions, and are 
guilty of them all ; not actually and substantially 
guilty, but condemned as if guilty of them all. 

Lastly, let us look at the extent of this purpose. 
" For God so loved the world? What does this term 



Love Unutterable. 333 

" world " mean ? All mankind. Take the seventeenth 
verse as the measure of it. " God sent not His Son 
into the world to condemn the world." You would 
see at once that it means all the world. " God sent 
His Son into the world that the world through Him 
might be saved." What does it mean there ? The 
whole world of sinners ? Some people say not. I do 
not know how it could mean all mankind in the first 
part and not in the last. The extent of this work of 
Christ in redemption is just as broad as the effects of 
sin ; as sin has tainted all mankind, this salvation 
brings health to all mankind ; as sin has corrupted 
all nations, this salvation shall be to all nations ; as all 
races ar*e alike in relation to sin, all races are included 
in this salvation ; it comes to all classes alike. It 
comes to all races of men alike, no matter what dis- 
tinction outwardly there may be, because these dis- 
tinctions have nothing to do with their humanity 
or with their sin. The black skin, the white skin, 
the red skin, do these interfere with the claims of 
God upon the human soul ? Have they any rela- 
tion to the offering of Christ upon Moriah for the sins 
of mankind ? There is no respect of persons with 
God — none, none, none ; and no respect of persons 
with Christ. He himself sprung from a race, though 
royal, yet debased. He sprung up in the midst of a 
nation which, though once at the head of the nations, 
was then the laughing-stock of the polished Greeks 



334 Living Words. 

and despised by the sterner and more philosophic 
Romans ; which to this day is not merely disliked, but 
despised ; most meanly and unjustly. A noble man, 
above all, a man trained in the pure Gospel, has no 
such feeling ; lie durst not despise his fellow-being, 
least of all under the shadow of the cross. 

And now for the practical lesson of the text. 
First, for ourselves, as individuals, the practical 
question is, Have we any share in the blessing 
which this text offers ? " God so loved the world 
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life." What a comprehensive promise it is ! 
Is it nothing to you, this promise? Have* you be- 
lieved ? Are you saved ? Do you feel to-day that 
you are a child of God ? that this infinite love of 
God has found you out ? 

Secondly, our own love of God should be exalted ; 
we should endeavor to nourish our minds into grand 
views of God as our infinite loving Father ; and es- 
pecially should we seek to get these views by con- 
templating Him in the gift of His Son— His infinite 
love that spared not his only Son, but freely offered 
Him for us ; by dwelling upon the manifestation of 
His love in suffering the death of Christ upon the 
cross — the death of matchless agony, the measure 
of matchless love. By nourishing our minds into 
grand vtews of God, and exalting our Saviour in our 



Love U?iutterable. 335 

thoughts, we lift ourselves above the miserable at- 
mosphere of human strifes and passions. 

Thirdly, as there is no respect of persons with 
God, so we are bound to love all mankind, as all man- 
kind alike share in this infinite goodness and love ; 
we are bound to cherish for all mankind the feel- 
ing of brotherhood. A great deal is said of phi- 
lanthropy and benevolence doing this thing and that 
thing for the good of the race. If we are only pene- 
trated by the love of Christ, philanthropy cannot be a 
task, but becomes a pleasure. When the soul is 
filled with love it is no* sacrifice to do what other- 
wise would be a sacrifice. When your being is com- 
pletely in harmony with Christ, it is more difficult 
to refrain from doing good than to do good. Colo- 
nizing Africa, getting rid of slavery, educating the 
common people, building asylums for the poor and 
the outcast, sending the word of life to the perish- 
ing millions of the race — are the natural bloom of 
Christian benevolence, the efflorescence of the love of 
Christ : the soul filled with God's love becomes it- 
self a fountain of all holy desires and Christ-like 
charities : bathed in the celestial atmosphere, it 
emits the fragrance of heaven. 



THE END. 



